From Blue to Red
by cronashy-absentia
Summary: (Resbang 2015) Morte University sits in a small port town with a strange legend: a giant white shark that haunts its coves. Maka's barely been a college student for twenty-four hours when a sudden wrong turn brings her face-to-face with the shark itself. However, nothing in the stories had suggested that the shark would be a man, or that witches might be involved.
1. Bicycle

**Welcome to Resbang 2015, everybody! Before I start, I'd like to give a special thanks to my beta therewithasmile. Be sure to check out my artist Haleyham's work on tumblr, too. We've all worked hard on this, and I'm proud to present you with the final product.**

 **Cronashy-absentia presents to you:**

 **From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 1: Bicycle**

* * *

His every breath was a struggle. Oxygen no longer freely passed through his lungs, and the water that was constantly washing over him didn't help.

"Don't worry, boy," She cackled, holding him down. "You won't drown, I promise. Just stop fighting it."

He squeezed his eyes shut to shield them from the rushing surf. He wished to close his ears just as tightly, but his hands were bound behind his back.

"Your mother gave her life so that this wouldn't harm you. Why don't you use her gift?"

His mouth opened to speak, but salty brine rushed into his jaws. Every drop that touched his skin was turning it pale and rough, and the water that poured down his throat was altering his lungs.

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she then lifted his head from off the sand. "You're tougher than you look," She said. "All this time, and you still won't give in. We've been sitting here for hours."

The man coughed, expelling the saltwater from his lungs. He opened his eyes, catching the woman in a fierce red gaze. Her amber eyes blinked, unfazed.

"Still adamant, are we?" She sighed. "You can't fight it for much longer. Soon my counter-curse will take over."

At the words "counter-curse," a harsh, animal-like scowl took over the man's face. Rage began to control his consciousness and his irises became wild with hatred as he whipped his head around to stare her directly in the eyes.

"It's not a counter-curse!" He spat, "It's just another curse! I'd rather drown than-!"

Abruptly, his voice was silenced by the ocean as the witch tossed him into its waves, his entire body submerged beneath the dark, disquiet sea.

The teen thrashed beneath the tide, as the binds around his ankles and wrists prevented him from doing anything other than struggle. He turned his head upward, the water's surface mere inches away from his face, but that distance continued to grow as the waves carried him out to sea. He held his last remaining breath tightly in his cheeks, not daring to let go of it. But he could already feel his body changing: the scales were growing back, and his legs had begun to blend together.

The second he could no longer sustain himself with what little oxygen remained in his lungs, the sides of his neck split open and formed into gills.

The transformation had consumed him.

* * *

"Alright class, I want to make three things very clear from the beginning," the professor uttered the first words his students heard from him, right before he slammed a large textbook down onto his desk. Scars that resembled incision marks littered his face. His blasé olive eyes swept over his class behind the ellipses of his glasses, and he possessed a ragged mop of grey hair which caused him to seem older than he probably was.

"First, I hate icebreakers, so we won't be doing any more of those, even though it's your first day. I'm sure you already had your fair share of them in Ms. Mjolnir's class, anyway. Second, my name is Professor Stein," he said.

From their seats near the back of the class, Maka Albarn frowned.

" _The first thing he says about himself is what he hates, and then he tells us his name_ ," She thought to herself. Even so, the sociology professor, Ms. Mjolnir, did have them do a lot of icebreakers. She didn't teach anything until the last ten minutes of class.

Glancing to the side, Maka could tell that her friend Crona was already feeling intimidated by the stern-talking teacher. She rocked a little in her seat, her jaw pulled tight.

Stein continued, "Third, I'm smarter than any of you, which is why I'm the teacher and you're not. Now that we've got that out of the way, I figure that we'll start with something simple," He said, grabbing a small remote from on top of his desk. "As I hope you're all aware, this is Biology 1. However, most of you are undoubtedly here for a marine biology major, seeing as this is Morte University, and it's what we're famous for. So, I'd like to ask you all a question."

At the click of one of the buttons on his remote, a PowerPoint presentation began on the whiteboard. Stein pointed to the photograph on the screen with his laser pointer.

"Can anyone tell me what this is?" He asked simply. Immediately, the rambunctious blue-haired teen who sat a few rows ahead of Maka began waving his hand. Stein straightened his glasses. "And who are you again?"

"I AM THE MIGHTY BLACK STAR!" The brash student shouted loud enough that the elephants in Africa probably wished they could cover their ears, thought Maka ruefully.

Their teacher merely blinked. "And what is the answer to my previous question, Black Star?" continued Stein, entirely unfazed.

Maka was contemplating the oddness of the man's name as he blurted out: "It's a shark!"

Stein wasted no time in picking up one of the whiteboard erasers before promptly throwing it into Black Star's face.

"No," He said, his steady tone beginning to unnerve Maka. "You're in college now. Be more specific."

While the tall, dark-haired girl next to Black Star began doting on him and his new injury, Maka raised her hand confidently.

"Yes, and who are you?" Stein said.

"Maka Albarn," she stated, "and it's a tiger shark, sir." Stein nodded.

"Good," he said, but the pitch of his voice implied boredom rather than appreciation. "This is a picture of a tiger shark that I took myself while scuba diving."

Having seemingly recovered from the large bruise on his forehead, Black Star yelled loudly, "Did you see the White Shark?"

For the first time, Stein's face showed the slightest hint of irritation. "No," He said sternly. "There is no White Shark. And I hope that's the last I hear of an imaginary creature in my class."

For good measure, he threw another eraser at Black Star.

Maka's attention was piqued. " _White Shark_?" She wondered, picking at her pencil's eraser with her thumbnail. After a moment, however, she dismissed the thought as Black Star merely being ignorant and didn't think much more of it.

The remainder of Stein's class went relatively smoothly. At least, no more erasers were thrown. Even though Maka understood most of what was being said, her professor had a habit of speaking over the other students' heads. She would have to go back to her dorm later and read over the textbook to have the lesson explained in simpler terms, and she imagined that the other students would do the same if they were serious about passing the class.

At the sound of the bell, Stein shut off the projector. "Remember everyone," He had to shout slightly to be heard over the sounds of scraping chairs and rushing students, hurrying to be free from their sadistic professor. "Read pages one through thirty-two before our next class."

"Forget reading!" exclaimed Black Star, "I'm outta here! Later, sicko!" He then bolted out of the classroom like a blue comet. Maka observed that the dark-haired girl followed him, squeaking out an apology to Stein before dashing into the hallway.

"Are you ready, Maka?" Crona asked quietly after she finished putting her books back in her bag. Maka nodded, casting one last glance towards the tiger shark that once again filled up the whiteboard, before she followed her friend out the door.

* * *

Maka took in a deep breath of ocean air. The pedals of her bike flew in circles underneath her feet, its rhythmic ticking almost drowned out by the melody of the nearby sea.

"Isn't this fun, Crona?" She called behind her, turning to watch her friend. She nodded, easily keeping up with Maka even though the pink-haired teen wasn't pedaling very fast. Her long legs made up for her low speed.

Maka beamed as she pedaled over the street. Port Morte wasn't a very busy city aside from the campus, which was separated from the main town by backroads, so the streets were clear of cars as the two friends toured the town for a bite to eat. Maka loved the fact that she'd get to travel like that all the time there; she loved biking.

The only thing she didn't enjoy about it was that she had next to no idea where anything was.

Her bike skidded to a halt as Maka grabbed the handle brakes. The road forked before her: one side was paved, the other was sand and gravel.

"Maka?" Crona said, coming up beside her, "Why'd you stop?"

The blonde twisted her head back and forth, childish pigtails swishing across her shoulders with each motion.

"I'm not quite sure which road we're supposed to take," she admitted. "I mean, there aren't any road signs."

Crona followed her gaze down each road. "Well… I'd pick the paved one," She said. "I don't think that a dirt road like that would lead to town," She offered, but Maka wasn't convinced.

"I don't know," She sighed. "Tell you what. You go down the main road, and I'll take the rocky one. I'll text you if I find the town, and you text me if you do. All right?" She suggested.

Crona's eyes shifted back and forth between the main road and the other one. Maka could see that she didn't want to be separated from her, but her friend's eyes took on a frightened air as she looked down the ominous-looking path.

"Okay," Crona agreed quietly, beginning to pedal once more. "I'll see you in a little bit, I guess."

Maka waved. "Remember to text me if you find anything!" She called, staring down the back road. Immediately, her bike began bumping back and forth on the gravel. With a grunt of effort, she pushed forward. The path began to slope slightly after a minute, and when she looked ahead of her, Maka could see that it descended down into a passage through two large sea cliffs.

It definitely wasn't Main Street, that much Maka was sure of. There were no houses, no commotion; only rocks with more rocks, save a small blotch of orange that caught her eye. Against her better judgement, her curiosity won over her. As she tried to cycle her way down the steep path, she noticed the shape of a cabin. Perhaps the occupants knew where Main Street was, she thought as she braked quickly - hitting the wrong rock with her tire would thrust her down the hill and plant her face-first in the gravel. Eventually she decided to continue on foot, walking her bike alongside her.

"Hello?" She called, leaning her bike against the beach house. The building's bright orange hue was a sharp contrast to the rocky surrounding landscape.

"This shade of orange would stand out against anything," she added to herself, stepping up on the porch. "Hello?" She asked again as she knocked on the door. "Anyone home?"

"Mew."

Maka turned around at the noise, only to find a small black cat staring back at her with luminescent amber eyes. It sat upon the porch railing, and the evening light that caught its fur caused it to appear almost purple. Maka smiled at it.

"Hi there. Do your owners live here?"

"Mew," the cat seemed to reply, before jumping off the porch. It padded into the gravel road and then looked behind itself, as if to see if Maka was following. "Mew."

Maka's sight traveled down the remainder of the road. There was only another short distance down the path before it ended in a small beach and bay secluded by cliffs, with a weather-worn pier jutting out from the sand. The area was kind of dismal and colorless, littered more with rocks and boulders than otherwise.

Maka sighed, about to turn back and head back to the main road.

"Mew."

She sighed. "Look, cat, I need to go back meet my-"

When she turned around, she was cut off suddenly as something caught her eye. In the thin area of water she could see, a large entity approached the beach. A large, pale shape poked its way out of the surf, gaining speed as it made its way under the pier. Maka couldn't tell quite what it was, but from a distance, she could make a guess. Unanswered questions from earlier that day resurfaced in her mind and fed her imagination, causing her to gasp.

"It's the White Shark," she breathed.


	2. Fish N' Ships

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 2: Fish N' Ships**

* * *

The black cat sprinted ahead of Maka as she tore down the trail. She wasn't superstitious, but she couldn't help but feel a slight sense of foreboding as she followed the icon of bad luck down to the shoreline, and to whatever waited in the water. She struggled to slow herself while running down the slope; she didn't want to be unable to stop and have momentum carry her directly into the ocean. However, as the white shape sticking from the water came into focus, she quickened her pace. A sense of urgency governed her actions when she perceived a large, white dorsal fin emerging from the surf. The huge form that accompanied the fin under the waves became clearer as she got closer, causing her eyes to widen.

"It's huge," she said to herself.

The cat trotted out onto the pier, looking down at the water as if expecting something. Make became terrified for the pet when it reached a paw down and batted the air above the surface. She wasn't about to let an innocent, unsuspecting cat be attacked by a shark, especially since said cat probably belonged to whoever lived in the beach house.

"No, kitty!" she shouted, having made it to the pier. Meanwhile, the creature was drawing ever closer.

Maka questioned for a moment if she should use the opportunity to take notes on a previously mythical creature, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. The cat's owners would be upset if she didn't save it, she reasoned, as she ran towards the edge of the pier. Although, as she got closer, the image of the submerged shark began to blur.

Maka stared at it in confusion. It was as if reality itself was bending, compressing and stretching the creature. In one moment, there was a shark beneath the waves. At the next moment, a man emerged from where the beast had been.

A man with a shark tail substituting for the lower half of his body.

Maka stared, mouth agape, as the man rubbed the water out of his eyes with one hand, a mackerel in the other.

"Blair, I brought you your-!" he froze midsentence as he noticed Maka staring at him from the dock. Under any other circumstance she would have found his deep, unique voice attractive, however she was still too stunned to notice his desirability. The man seemed too shocked to continue anyway. Instead, his red eyes bore right into Maka's green. She could see panic race through his irises, undoubtedly questions on his mind, but it was nothing compared to her own confusion.

His mouth hung open slightly, but neither of them spoke. Maka's eyes then began to dart around, quickly analyzing his appearance. He seemed tall and well-built, but his hair was white, his eyes were red, and his teeth, from what she could see, were sharpened into points.

Maka gulped slightly. "You're…" she began, trying to remember how to breathe. The white-haired man, if she could really call him that, didn't reply as she collected her thoughts. "You're a shark," she stated.

The man blinked at her. "No I'm not," he replied slowly.

Maka may have been knocked for six, but she wasn't too startled to be skeptical. She raised an eyebrow before pointedly motioning to the tail that poked out of the water behind him. He twisted as he followed her gaze.

"That's not mine," he blatantly lied.

Maka's mouth opened and closed inaudibly a few times. The man stared at her, waiting and watching. He waded closer to the dock, and then hoisted himself up so that his forearms were folded before him on the planks. His tail could be heard splashing in the water beneath him.

Maka started to take a step back, which caused the shark-turned-half-man to pale.

"No," He was hesitant, reaching forward, but his reaction only resulted in Maka retreating faster. "I can't let you leave!" He exclaimed.

At that, Maka turned on her heel and proceeded to run up the hill. She could hear the shark-man-thing shouting behind her, but she didn't dare turn around to look.

Her breath came in gasps as she grabbed her bike from against the orange beach house and hopped on it. She pedaled frantically, only slowing down when she was out of sight of the small beach.

Maka wondered why she would have such delusions. She considered herself a logical girl; the fact that she couldn't make heads or tails of the situation was irritating to no end. Maybe she had stressed herself too much, she reasoned. Perhaps it was the salt in the air that had caused her to see things that didn't exist - she wasn't used to living at the beach, after all. Or she might've gone too fast on her bike, fallen off the slope, and hit her head once she'd landed. The lack of blood on her face proved otherwise, however, so she discarded that theory. The only remaining explanation was that she actually had talked to a sharkman, but that was impossible.

Her phone began to vibrate, cutting off Maka's thoughts. She stopped on her bike, setting one foot on the ground as she pulled the device from her pocket, and she sighed a little when she read the screen.

"I told her she could just text me," she murmured, but she was glad for the distraction. She brought the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Maka?" said the timid voice on the other end of the line. "Are you there? Are you okay?"

The blonde smiled a little. Crona's voice sounded natural and normal; it only further convinced her that the past few minutes had been a concussion-induced daydream. "Yeah, I'm fine, Crona," she said. "Did you find the town?"

"Yeah," Crona replied. "Did you find anything?"

Maka tensed slightly. She debated whether she should tell Crona anything about what she had seen, but she didn't want to seem like a madwoman, and she was almost certain that what she had witnessed wasn't real anyway.

"Nothing really," she said, "I just… lost my head for a minute."

There was a pause at the other end. They had known each other long enough that Crona could tell if something was bothering her, but Maka also knew that her friend wouldn't question her about it.

"Oh… Alright," Crona finally replied. Maka could tell that she wanted to know more, but neither of them was willing to say any more on the subject. Instead, her friend switched back to the previous topic. "Well, if you follow the other road, it'll take you directly into town. There's a cool-looking restaurant really close to where you'll get off the road; you'll probably be able to see the neon sign from there. It's called Fish N' Ships. Do you want to meet me there? I'll get us a table," she offered.

Maka took a deep breath. " _This is real_ ," she told herself, " _This is what reality is: going with a friend to eat fried fish. Not sharkmen. Sharkmen aren't real_."

"That sounds good," she said, trying to hide her irritation with herself and her imaginary encounter. "I'll see you then, all right?"

"Alright," came the response. After a moment, Crona added, "Are _you_ alright?"

Maka gripped one of the handlebars. "I'm just frustrated," she admitted, "And kind of confused. I'll tell you later, okay?"

The answer seemed to somewhat satisfy Crona. "Okay," she said. "I'll wait here for you."

"Okay. Bye," Maka hung up and stuffed the phone back in her pocket. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm herself down. Wordlessly, she began pedaling once more, turning back onto the main road and heading towards the town.

The neon signs lighting up Port Morte flashed at Maka as if they were in the 1950s. The boardwalk shone with bright games and blinking rides, while the Ferris wheel rotated in a circle of color. The ocean reflected the display, rippling waves distorting the palette of colours into a neon pastiche. Maka could see the display that Crona had mentioned: the words "Fish N' Ships" glowed upon the street.

"Maka!" Crona waved from the street corner. Maka forced a friendly smile as she braked her bike next to the shy teen.

"Hi, Crona," she greeted as she chained her ride to a nearby lamppost. "Have you been inside yet?"

Crona suddenly got fidgety. "Well… There was someone from our class in there," She said, but was promptly interrupted by a loud voice.

"Hey look, it's Maka!"

Without even turning around to see who had addressed her, Maka groaned. "Tell me it's not," she grumbled, but then a tanned and toned arm landed itself around her shoulders. Crona flinched.

"It is," she said.

"Whatcha doin' here, Maka? Drawn to my awesome brilliance?" Boasted Black Star, grinning widely. Maka attempted to shrug him off.

"No," she snapped in response. "And I haven't known you for more than twelve hours. Stop being so familiar with me."

Black Star cackled. "Yeah, but you threatened to punch me in the face earlier! That takes guts! I like people with guts!"

Maka caught the loud teen in a side glare. "I'll still punch you in the face, so get off of me."

Black Star shrugged and casually slid his arm from her shoulders. "Hey, since you're here, do you want to eat with me and the gang?" He asked. Maka raised an eyebrow, not sure if he was referring to an actual gang. She wouldn't put it past him to run about vandalizing things, but then again she hadn't known him for very long.

"What kind of gang?" she asked cautiously.

Black Star chuckled. Maka observed that he seemed wont to do that without any particular reason. "Just my friends from around town. I've lived here for a while, and we always pig out in Fish N' Ships on the first day of school. Been a tradition since I was in third grade," he explained.

Maka heard Crona release a sigh of relief. Evidently, she had had the same concerns.

"I guess we'll sit with you," she said. Black Star looked confused for a moment.

"We?" He repeated, but then looked behind Maka. "Oh! Hey… You!" He said, apparently unable to remember Crona's name. "Yeah, you can bring Shy Guy, if you want."

"G-guy?" Murmured Crona, frowning a little.

"Everybody should be in here by now!" Exclaimed Black Star, obviously ignoring Crona as he grabbed Maka's arm and dragged her inside Fish N' Ships. Crona followed slowly, hesitantly.

Black Star looked around the restaurant as Maka wiggled free from his grip. The interior smelled like fries and cooking oil, and was decorated with cheap plastic fish and inner tubes hanging from the ceiling on fishing wire. Sea-blue walls were adjourned with fishing nets, plastic shells, and starfish. The seating options ranged from tables to booths, while people ordered from the counter close to the double-doored entrance, causing names of menu items to be shouted into the kitchen.

"Black Star!" Called a high-pitched voice that could be heard throughout the restaurant. Maka's eye caught an energetic blonde waving wildly in a doorway. "We're back here!"

Black Star grinned back. "Awesome!" He called. Maka noticed that nearly everyone in Fish N' Ships seemed to be either staring or glaring at the noisy pair, so she quietly stepped back and tried to not look like she knew them. However, Black Star had other plans, and he snagged Maka's arm again.

"C'mon, Maka!" He shouted, pulling her with him. Maka scowled hard enough at the staring faces that they turned away, but she could feel the heat from embarrassment coming off of her face in waves. She was as bright and red as a Christmas decoration. Crona got off worse, though; she pulled her bangs around her face and darted after Maka, watching the floor rather than what was in front of her, and constantly spurting out apologies to the people she ran into.

"Sis got us the party room!" Beamed the cheery girl that had greeted them. "Ooh, and you brought new people!"

Black Star nodded. "This is Maka and Shy Guy!" He proclaimed, shoving them into the room. "Say hi, everybody!"

"I have a name…" Crona squeaked out, but she was still hiding behind her fringe.

"Those are Kid and Tsubaki, Patty met us at the door, and her sis Liz is assistant manager," Black Star introduced his friends. Maka recognized the tall, dark-haired girl from class, but the other man she hadn't seen before. His eyes were a striking, almost unnatural shade of gold, while his hair was so deep and dark that it reflected light like polished obsidian, causing it to look like it had white streaks in it.

"Pleasure to meet you," he said simply. Glancing behind Maka, he smiled a little. "I take it that 'Shy Guy' isn't your real name," he told Crona. The timid teen nodded, going to sit next to Kid.

Though skeptical at first, Maka quickly warmed up to Black Star's friends. As it turned out, Tsubaki had lived in Japan until she was fifteen, Kid was the son of Morte University's president, and his father had adopted Liz and Patty Thompson from off the streets of Brooklyn.

"So what are you doing here, Maka?" Asked Liz, sitting down with them after her shift had ended.

Maka smiled. "Crona and I are just here for classes at Morte University," she stated. But the mention of school reminded her of something Black Star had said earlier, and of the creature at the beach. "Hey, Black Star?" she said, "What 'White Shark' were you talking about in class?"

Black Star paused from tearing into his tuna. "Hm? Oh, right! You're a newbie!" He said with food in his mouth. "The White Shark's famous in Port Morte!"

Kid stiffened all of a sudden. "Can we not talk about it?" He muttered, but Black Star ignored him. The loud teen swallowed before continuing.

"They say the White Shark's been terrorizing this town for centuries," His voice dropped, as if he was telling a ghost story. But before he could say any more, Kid quickly stood from his seat.

"I'm done eating," he mumbled, and then he promptly walked out the door. Maka frowned, but Liz leaned over to her and explained in a whisper,

"He's afraid of sharks. He doesn't really like to talk about them."

Maka nodded in understanding, and continued to listen to Black Star. She tried to catch Crona's eye, but her friend stared after Kid and didn't meet her gaze.

"People say that he's bigger than Jaws," Grinned Black Star, "And that he's responsible for every shark attack around here, since he scares off all the other sharks!"

"I don't want to hear anything that makes me afraid of the beach," Crona said suddenly, grabbing her bag and heading out. Maka turned to stop her, but paused. If the conversation made Crona uncomfortable, then she didn't blame her for leaving. All the same, the blonde felt as if she had another reason for leaving, and she wouldn't have been surprised if Kid had anything to do with it.

"That's great, Black Star," Tsubaki smiled gently, bringing Maka's attention back to the subject of the shark. "But you should probably add that the shark isn't real."

Black Star smirked at her. "Oh, he's real. He's as real as Jaws!" He said.

Tsubaki's fond smile wavered slightly as slight exasperation entered her features. "Jaws wasn't real, either," She said. Black Star seemed confused.

"Wait… You mean _Jaws_ wasn't a documentary?" He asked.

"The White Shark could very well be a girl," muttered Liz. "You don't need to keep calling her 'he.'"

"You don't know it's a girl!" Objected Black Star. Liz glared back at him.

"Well you don't know it's a boy!" She protested.

Patty grinned. "Fight, fight, fight!" She cheered.

Tsubaki sighed. "And I thought this was the year that we wouldn't get into a food fight…"

Maka gradually began to scoot away from the group, not wanting to get fish thrown at her, when a hand suddenly grabbed her shoulder and stopped her retreat.

"I need to talk with you," a low voice growled. "In private."

Maka whipped around, and abruptly found herself staring into angered, crimson irises.

Speak of the devil.


	3. Sight

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 3: Sight**

* * *

Maka stared at the man next to her. He was different from before, dressed in an orange shirt cloaked by a leather jacket, while khaki pants and boots covered his legs and feet. But after a moment's glance, she realized that there was no mistaking it; he was the man from the beach.

The sharkman.

His gaze hardened slightly. "I said, come with me," he snapped.

Maka gulped a little, but then she set her jaw. "Give me one good reason why I should," she shot back. The man glowered at her.

"I'll give you thirty-two good reasons," he retorted. No sooner had he said that then he pulled his lips back, revealing serrated teeth. Maka felt her breath halt for a moment, before she chanced a glance downward.

"You have legs," she managed to squeak out. The white-haired mystery before her made a noise in the back of his throat that rivaled an irritated dog.

"Yes, I have legs. Most people do. Come on," he added, walking out of the room. Maka took a glance behind her, but upon noticing that Black Star was getting ready to throw his crab at Liz, she decided to choose the lesser of two evils and followed the sharkman.

He didn't stop walking until they were out the back door, by the dumpster in the dimly-lit rear alley. In the blink of an eye, he turned on his heel to stare Maka down. "Let me make this clear," he hissed, "You won't breathe a word of anything you saw on the beach earlier, or you might just find yourself the next shark attack victim. Got it?" He demanded. Maka shifted her weight between her feet for the smallest of moments, but then she summoned her courage. She couldn't allow herself to be shoved around by a man she barely even knew, even if he could easily rip off her arm. Besides, if push came to shove, she could just as effortlessly snap his own limbs; a black belt in mixed martial arts knew a thing or two about takedowns. She could handle herself, she reasoned, and so she glared right back at him.

"Not unless you explain yourself to me," she retorted. The man rolled his eyes.

"It's complicated."

"Then just answer my questions," she said. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

"I'll answer five questions," he muttered begrudgingly. "That's it."

Maka smirked a little bit, glad she was getting somewhere. "First, what's your name?"

Crimson irises directed themselves at her for the smallest of moments, until they swiftly turned back to the ground. "Soul," he replied.

Maka stared at him. "What kind of a name is that?"

Soul's expression became snarky as the victorious emotion was wiped from Maka's face. "It's a cool name. That's two questions," he answered smartly, "You have three left."

Maka's face lit up in embarrassment and indignation. "That didn't count!" she insisted.

"Yes it did," he said. "Ask your next question, or I'm leaving."

Maka resisted the urge to punch a few of those pointed teeth right out of Soul's mouth and struggled to compose herself. After taking a moment to collect her thoughts, she questioned, "Are you really a sharkman?"

Soul narrowed his eyes slightly. "No," he snapped. But even as Maka opened her mouth to ask her next question, he sighed. "I guess, if that's what you want to call it. I'm a shark, but also a man, but I wouldn't really say 'sharkman.' It's not like I'm a combination or anything; I'm both," he stated.

Maka stared at him. "How does that even work? The transformation thing," she continued. At that inquiry, the solemnity drained from Soul's face. He huffed, his temporary seriousness replaced in an instant by his previous curt attitude.

"Like I said, it's complicated," he said. "There's magic and stuff involved, and it's too much for normal people to understand. Last question," He grumpily prompted her to continue.

Maka's mind instantaneously generated a hurricane of fierce comments, such as telling that oddly-named not-sharkman just how many straight A's she had made throughout her years of school, or the excellent scholarship she achieved, as proof of how easily she could understand a new subject. Besides, magic wasn't real anyway. She didn't voice any of her objections, however, because right in front of her was solid proof of the existence of magic, and she was afraid of accidentally blurting out a question and costing her the interrogation.

"Why didn't you transform your tail into legs when I showed up on the dock?" She finally asked. Soul shuffled a little bit on his feet, scratching at the back of his head in telltale signs of nervousness or embarrassment.

"I, um…" he started out slowly, "I wasn't thinking?" He hesitated before continuing, "I didn't have enough time, either. You had already seen my tail anyway, and you had obviously already seen me transform, judging by how you were gawking at me. I wasn't expecting you to be on the dock. No one ever goes down there, and for Blair to deliberately lead you to our bay…"

"Blair?" Maka interrupted. "You mean the cat?"

Soul shook his head. "Sorta. She's not really a cat, she's a former familiar-You cheat. That was six questions!" He suddenly blurted out, starting Maka. "Look, girl-!"

"Maka," she interrupted him.

"Maka," he corrected himself, but not without rolling his eyes first. "I don't know you, and I don't trust you, so from now on I'm going to be keeping an eye on you," he said. Before Maka could protest, he continued quickly, "I need to make sure you don't tell anyone about me or what I am. Got it?"

The blonde glared at him. "Can't you just take my word for it?"

Soul shook his head. "No. Like I said, I don't know anything about you. You could turn around and post about me on the internet or something," he said. "I can't afford that."

"But you can't just follow me around like a stalker!" Maka protested. Soul merely shrugged.

"Yes, I can. It won't be that bad; I've had over a hundred years to learn how to avoid people. It'll seem like I'm not even there," he explained.

Maka raised an eyebrow. "Over a hundred years?" she questioned. Soul frowned.

"Ignore that. Just let me monitor you," he said.

Maka looked down towards the ground, weighing her options. She could outright refuse, simply oblige, or do nothing but turn tail and run, but he'd probably still follow her no matter what she did. She couldn't see any alternative to his demands, nor could she see any way the current situation would benefit her.

Maka noticed that Soul had begun to look satisfied, apparently deciding that her silence signified agreement, when she spoke up, "What do I get out of this?"

Soul halted. He turned around, fixing Maka in a jaded expression. "I won't kill you," he said, "Isn't that enough?"

The blonde glared at him. "No," she snapped. "I'm not going to let myself be followed around by a strange man that threatened to bite me."

Soul glowered at her. "I'm not strange," he muttered.

"You can't get much stranger than being a shark," Maka retorted with a huff.

Soul didn't respond, but Maka could see him tense at her words. His shoulders bunched, his knees became stiff, and his hands clenched at his sides. Eyes becoming distant, he directed his gaze towards the ground beneath them.

"I know," he breathed after a moment. Maka watched him closely as he seemed to gather himself once more, and he met her sight again. "Which is why I can't have anyone knowing about me. Okay? I can't take any chances. If you don't trust me, at least try to understand where I'm coming from."

The harshness fell from Maka's face at his words. He was obviously becoming desperate. She wondered if he was maybe manipulating her, playing with her emotions to try and get her to sympathize with him, but one look into his distraught eyes proved otherwise.

Like a patchwork quilt, so many different emotions and realities were stitched together in his red irises and abysmal pupils that Maka held her breath as she scanned them. Within his gaze, truth and shame were intertwined as two halves of a whole: both glaringly obvious, yet somehow unable to be uttered willingly through his lips.

Maka had always possessed an uncanny ability to look into one's eyes and see thoughts deeper than what they portrayed in words or mannerisms, like pieces of their soul. Jokingly, her father had dubbed it "soul perception." Despite her growing antagonism with him, the name had stuck in Maka's head, and her insight only grew stronger as she got older. Some people were more difficult to read than others, but Soul's eyes were a paradox in and of themselves.

The blonde kept that seemingly indefinite gaze as she spoke slowly, "I… Guess that's alright."

A shade shifted in Soul's eyes; a note of hopefulness displaying itself only in tints of ruby. Nothing else in his face or posture portrayed the emotion.

"But," Maka added before he became too expectant, "I have one condition."

The ruby was altered again, hinting at suspicion.

"You'll tell me things about sharks," said Maka, "And about the ocean. Things that'll help in my college courses."

A few of Soul's emotions finally broke free of his eyes and displayed themselves in his stance as he crossed his arms. "Isn't that what your textbooks and Google are for?" he grumbled.

"It's always helpful to get information from the source," Maka reminded him. "I'd rather experience the ocean than read a textbook about it."

Soul chuckled humorlessly. "Well, you're not going to experience it. At best, you'll get a few Q&A sessions," he told her. When he averted his gaze from hers, Maka couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. "But will that make you happy? Just getting me to answer your questions?"

Maka nodded. "Yes," she said. At her reply, Soul's posture became slightly more relaxed.

"Good," he sighed. When he didn't make any further indication that he was going anywhere, Maka felt the need to prompt him.

"You can… Go home now," she said haltingly.

Soul gave her a look that clearly asked if she was thick in the head. "Uh, no. I'm following you, remember?" he said. Maka groaned.

"But I need to go back in there to tell everyone I'm leaving, and then I'm going back to my dorm!" she declared. "It's not like I can just take you with me, I only have one seat on my bike. And you can't come back to my dorm; I already have a roommate, and the rooms aren't allowed to be coed."

Soul shrugged. "I'll figure it out," he brushed her off. Without warning, he grabbed her shoulders and began pushing her back inside. "Now, go inside and eat that disgusting stuff you call 'fried fish,' like a good normal human. Just act naturally and ignore me."

Maka dug her heels into the ground at first in nonverbal protest to Soul's actions, but she quickly gave in and walked back inside of her own accord. Even so, when she returned to the back room, she found Liz cleaning off the table. The others were nowhere to be seen.

"Where did everybody go?" Maka asked. Liz grumbled a few four-letter words under her breath.

"I kicked Black Star and Patty out for throwing food, getting crab in my hair, and knocking over that plant," she said, pointing at a fallen fern in the corner of the room. "Tsubaki followed them. Nobody paid. But Black Star proposed a couple years ago that, as a general rule, the last person to leave would pay for the food and the damage to the room."

It took Maka mere seconds to realize what Liz was implying. "No," she said quickly. "I don't even know you guys very well. And won't you be the last person here?"

Liz snorted. "Yeah, because I work here and I'm expected to clean up this dang mess," she snapped. "I'm not paying my own boss." Turning to Maka, she held out her hand. "Pay up."

Maka emerged from Fish N' Ships a few minutes later, after paying no less than a hundred dollars out of pocket. Grumpily, she sulked out the front door, vaguely aware of the footsteps trailing her; Soul was staying true to his word.

"Maka?"

A small voice caught her attention. She turned swiftly, and to her surprise, she found Crona sitting on a bench against the building. The pink-haired girl stretched, as if she had been sitting there for a while.

"You were taking a long time. I was starting to get worried," she admitted. "I saw the others leave a little bit ago."

Maka sat down next to her friend. "You waited for me?" she asked, perplexed. Crona nodded, her slow motions portraying grogginess.

"Yeah. I didn't want to go home alone," she said. "Did you learn all you wanted to know about the White…?" She suddenly froze, her words halting as her eyes went wide. Maka stiffened.

"Crona?" She spoke quickly, touching her hand to the other girl's shoulder. "Crona, what's wrong?"

Crona's lips moved silentlt for a moment. "Sh… Sha…" She stammered when she found her voice, pointing behind Maka. The blonde turned, catching Soul in the corner of her vision. Crona was staring right at him. "Shark," she shrilled out. "Shark!"

Maka stiffened. "You can tell?" She spoke without thinking. She heard Soul dart forward towards them, and as he did so, Crona jumped from the bench and steadily stepped backwards.

"Maka, run!" she shouted.

"Don't say another word about me," Soul's voice was suddenly low and threatening in Maka's ear.

"It's right behind you! It's going to bite you!" screamed Crona, in hysterics as she grabbed Maka's arm and pulled her away from Soul. She dashed across the street, almost getting the two hit by cars. Once they reached the opposite sidewalk, she frantically tried to unchain her bike with frightened, shaking hands.

"What's gotten into you?!" Maka exclaimed, jerking away from Crona. "T-there's no shark! We're on land; there can't be any shark! That's just a guy!" But no sooner had she spoken than Soul caught up to them, grabbing Crona's wrist before she could blink.

"How can you see me?" he growled.

Crona's following shriek split the small town. Soul leaped away from her at the noise, giving the pink-haired teen just enough time to hop on her bike and pedal as if fired from a canon. Maka started after her.

"Crona, wait up!" she cried.

"How can she see me?!" Soul repeated, but Maka ignored him as she grabbed her own bike.

"Maka, stop!" shouted Soul, grabbing her bike's handlebars before she could mount it. "I need you to find out if she's a threat," he whispered harshly. Maka promptly shoved him off.

"And what if she is?" she hissed back. "It's bad enough that you decided you're going to stalk me, but Crona's none of your business!" she said, before biking after her friend. She didn't hear Soul say any more, although his voice could have easily been lost through the wind rushing past Maka's ears.

* * *

Maka had been asleep for an hour before Crona worked up the courage to make the phone call. She couldn't risk having her friend hear; she wouldn't ever forgive her, nor would she even understand.

Crona didn't quite understand it herself.

She hadn't told Maka any more about what she had seen. The blonde had agreed to her request to forget about it, but Crona knew that she was worried for her. Even so, it was better that Maka didn't know.

With thin, timid fingers, Crona pressed the numbers on her phone's screen. She didn't want to call her, but she couldn't think of anyone else she could talk to about what had happened. She put the phone to her ear silently, both dreading and anticipating the noise that indicated a received call. Crona's heartbeat sped up, although it hadn't slowed down to its normal pace since she had seen the shark.

"Crona."

Her voice came cold and without greeting. Crona's breath hitched, and she instinctively straightened up.

"You'd better have a good reason for calling me at this hour. You don't plan on spouting out like a child how your first day of school went, do you?" Her tone was mocking. "Because I didn't ask. I don't want to know."

"No, that's not it!" Crona spoke quickly and in a hushed whisper. "Please d-don't hang up, I n-need help…" she stuttered.

The other end of the line was silent. Crona wondered inwardly what was going through the other woman's head, but then she spoke once more.

"It must be a magical issue, then."

Crona would've relaxed a tiny bit if that voice didn't automatically force rigidity through her bones with every syllable. "Y-yes," she said. "I saw something that Ma… My f-friend couldn't see."

"Go on," the voice prompted her. Crona gulped.

"I… I s-saw a shark," she whispered. The other woman was quiet.

"That's normal," she said after a minute.

"No," replied Crona, "Not on land. Not when my friend said that it was human."

The other woman said nothing once again. As the seconds stretched on, Crona began to think that she had hung up, until a laugh suddenly came over the line. One Crona had learned to fear.

"My dear Crona," she said, which only caused Crona to begin shaking, "You encountered a man with a curse. You can see him because of the genetics you inherited from me." She paused, chuckling. "Of course, that doesn't change the fact that you're still a pathetic little half-witch. You'll never be able to use magic, and you'll always be a failure."

Crona flinched. She didn't know how many times she had told herself not to be affected by those words, yet they still stung every time, like needles injecting into her skin. Now they only made sore spots hurt worse.

"Actually, I think that I'd like to come over to that little port town and see the cursed man for myself," added the other woman. "What was it called again? Port Morte?"

Crona felt as if she was being constricted, with every breath shallower and tighter than the last. "Y-yes ma'am," she managed to speak.

"Good," came the voice like poisoned honey. "I shouldn't have to tell you not to tell anyone about this little chat, right?"

Crona gulped, despite her entirely dry throat. "No, ma'am," she said.

"Right. I'll see you soon, dear. Goodbye, Crona," the other voice said.

The pink-haired girl nodded, too terrified to not remember that the other woman couldn't see her. "G-goodbye, Medusa," She squeaked out.

The phone clicked slightly as Crona lowered it from her ear and ended the call. She immediately fell backwards onto her bed, clutching the phone to her chest and sobbing noiselessly. How could she have done that, she asked herself. She had practically just invited the bane of her existence to visit her at school.

Suddenly her crying stopped. Tears still trickled out from her eyes, but her wide eyes stared directly at the wall as she realized it. Her mother had repeatedly referred to the shark as a man, rather than just saying 'human,' as Crona had.

Crona had never told Medusa that it was a man.


	4. Cat

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 4: Cat**

* * *

The raucous cries of early seagulls penetrated through the window of Maka and Crona's dorm, and no matter how much Maka tried to ignore them, the loud noises couldn't be kept from her ears. She groaned slightly, pulling her duvet from off of her head.

"The alarm hasn't even gone off yet…" She mumbled, glancing huffily at the digital clock on her bedside table. The iridescent pixels, a tiny red light in the sleepy room, read "5:47." The blonde grumpily yanked her blanket back over her face, resulting in an unexpected loud yowl as the action tossed something from her bed.

Crona jolted awake, eyes wide. Her lithe fingers scrabbled for her thin bedsheet to hold it to her chest. "What's going on?!" She exclaimed quickly. Maka held a finger to her lips as she switched on her bedside lamp.

"We don't want to wake up anyone else in the building," she chided gently, before sliding out of her bed.

Her feet landed directly on something thick and furry, prompting another yowl.

Maka jerked her feet back up, peering at the creature below her.

"Blair?" She wondered to herself. "Soul's cat?"

The black feline had somehow made its way into her dorm. Its irritation was evident as its tail swung back and forth and it growled slightly, its golden-colored eyes seemingly glaring up at her. She tilted her head, perplexed.

"Mew," the cat responded, resorting to licking down the fur on her back.

"Why is there a cat in our dorm?" Asked Crona, making her way over to Maka's bed. "How did it even get in here? The door was locked, right?"

Maka noticed when her friend tensed at her own words, so the blonde nodded soundly in assurance. "I made sure it was locked before I went to bed," she said. She knew how much Crona preferred to be safe and alone.

"Mew," Blair said again, drawing the girls' attention back to her.

Maka sighed, lifting the furry guest into her arms. "Well, no matter how she got in here, we're not allowed to have pets in the dorms," she sighed, moving to stand up, when a sudden movement from Crona drew her attention.

The pink-haired girl had backed herself against the wall, staring at Blair. Maka watched her friend's eyes in concern until she found something that confused her.

Crona's eyes always seemed to change color based on her mood. Whenever she was scared, her standard shade of deep, navy blue altered into a near haunting shade of grey, rimmed with black. However, in that moment the grey in her eyes had lightened immensely, and her pupils had shrunk to small dots within her monochrome irises. They were fear-stricken. Tremors traveled from her hands, up her limbs, and through her entire body, like evanescent bugs creeping all over her skin. Aside from that, she was paralyzed with fear.

Her display was nearly identical to how she had initially reacted to Soul the previous night.

"Crona?" Maka whispered, but the timid teen didn't respond. There was a tint of something in her eyes that she had never seen before, realized the shorter girl. For some reason, the faint grey that played in her irises was sparking with something Maka found herself labeling as spectral. It showed itself in a delicate shine, dancing dangerously within Crona's gaze, which made Maka wonder if perhaps her friend was looking at something that average eyes couldn't detect. If she was, that would explain her response to Soul, she thought. But she couldn't think of anything that Blair could be hiding, nor did she know how her friend could see beyond typical human perception.

"Crona," Maka said again, stronger, causing the pink-haired girl to jump out of her shrouded thoughts and whip around to Maka. "We need to take her back outside," she told her. She knew that to ask Crona if she was okay would only cause her walls to spring up, so she tried to distract her. The confrontation could be saved for later, after they both had had more sleep and were more relaxed.

Crona's gaze shifted back to Blair.

"Mew," the cat said, outwardly simply making noises, but Crona responded.

"Because things like you scare me!" Cried the gaunt teen, startling Maka. The cat turned its head away from Crona at that, as if offended, and the girl suddenly slammed her hand over her mouth. Her sight darted to Maka, and her fearful eyes were a silent prayer that her friend hadn't heard or seen what she had just done.

Maka stood from her bed, perplexed beyond comprehension. "I'm going to put her outside, alright?" She said slowly, sticking to her decision to confront Crona later. Crona merely nodded, leaving her friend to travel out the dorm door and into the hallway. Her bare feet delicately padded along the carpet while she walked towards the main entrance.

Streetlights remained dimly lit, and any trace of sunlight remained to be seen when Maka pushed open the glass door with her back. "If she made it here, she can take herself home," Maka yawned as she set the cat down, holding the automatically-locking door open with her foot. "Go on home, Blair. You shouldn't be here, and you're freaking out my best friend. Go home," she said, making shooing motions with her hands. The cat merely blinked up at her, otherwise unmoving. The blonde sighed and turned back inside the building sluggishly. She waited for the door to close, making sure that the cat hadn't followed her back inside. It still sat there, its fur looking purple once again under the yellowed lights, and remained that way even as Maka turned her back.

Bleariness only further pushed itself on Maka as she treaded back down the hallway. She considered herself lucky that she lived on the first floor and didn't have to use stairs or operate elevators just to get back to her bed. Locating her new room in dim light proved difficult, but she still remained grateful that at least it wasn't above her head. She pried open the door, pausing a moment when it creaked slightly, but she soon pushed inside.

"The cat's all gone now, Crona, you can go back to bed…"

"Mew."

Maka froze in their tracks at the sight. Like a swift and undetectable phantom, the cat was once again seated on Maka's bed.

"How'd she get back in here?" She yelped. The blonde suddenly felt more awake than she would have if someone had dumped cold water on her head. "She was just outside," she stammered, "I closed the door when she was outside. The window was closed in here. She… How…?"

"Mew."

"She's laughing at us," Crona whimpered, now a quivering ball obscured entirely by her bedsheet. Maka would've brushed off her comment before, maybe even laughed at it, but she wasn't so quick to ignore her words now that Crona had apparently responded to the animal.

"Is that the same cat?" She asked. A portion of the blanketed mass, a part which the blonde assumed to be Crona's head, nodded. "Well, how'd she get back in here?"

Maka gave Crona a minute to respond, but after her timid friend said nothing, the shorter girl sighed. She walked over to the cat, picking it up once again. She held the animal loosely with one arm, and used the other to pry open the window before promptly tossing the cat outside and into the bushes. She nodded in satisfaction at her work, and then turned back around after closing the window.

"Mew."

Maka almost jumped clean out of her skin. There it was; licking its paw on her bed and rubbing it over its tussled ears. There were even small, green leaves clinging to its fur from being thrown into the shrubs. It couldn't be denied that it was the exact same cat.

"You can't get rid of her," mumbled Crona. "She says… I-I mean, I think it's here to stay."

Maka groaned, digging the heels of her palms into her closed eyes. "But we can't have cats in the dorms," she grumbled. Passively flopping down onto her bed, she kicked the cat off before pulling her duvet around herself.

"But apparently we're not getting rid of it this morning," she admitted, "So we're going to have to hope that no one discovers her and wait until I can take her back to Soul tomorrow."

Crona didn't reply again, prompting Maka to look back towards her friend. She smiled a little when she noticed the gradual rise and fall of Crona's chest under the blanket, signifying peaceful sleep.

"Mew."

Maka's sighed. "Quiet, cat," she snapped, pulling her blanket back over her head.

* * *

Maka checked behind herself. It was still following her. Even as she rode on her bike, pedaling faster than any normal cat could run, it continued to chase her.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the cat had constantly appeared all through classes and meals to sit on Maka's lap. She had been lectured more than once by Azusa, the physics teacher, although the only thing that seemed to keep Blair away for more than ten minutes was Stein's threat to dissect the animal. Even so, it met up with Maka as soon as she left the classroom, and Azusa had sworn that if that cat wasn't off campus by tomorrow, she was going to have to ask Maka to move and take the cat with her.

"I can't just leave that dorm," she grumbled as she biked towards the tiny back road. "I just got there. You're ruining my reputation, stupid cat."

Blair made no noise in response, leaving Maka to mutter to herself while she turned onto the dirt road.

"I didn't even get to talk to Crona much today, because I was too busy apologizing for you," she complained, stopping her bike upon reaching the orange house. She slid from the seat, leaned her bike against the paneling, and tromped up the steps to the front porch. The blonde then pulled open the unlocked screen door and knocked heavily on the wooden door behind it.

"Soul!" She yelled. "Come get your cat!"

"This isn't Soul's house."

Maka jumped in surprise for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, whipping around. The blonde was only baffled further when she found herself face-to-face with a young woman, possibly not much older than she was. However, after taking a single look at her miniscule crop top, her long boots, and almost nonexistent shorts, she determined that the taller woman was certainly wearing less than her.

"This is my house," she announced, adjusting her oddly-shaped hat atop her head. It resembled a witch's wide-brimmed hat, but instead of being pointed, it ended in a long trail that stuck out behind her like a curled tail.

Maka pulled away from the door. "Oh…" She said slowly, glancing down at the small beach down the path. No white shark was to be seen. "Well, uh," she spoke slowly, trying to find her words, "My friend's cat hangs out around here, and she's been following me all day, so I was just going to return her."

The woman blinked at her. Without warning, her entire disposition changed as she burst out laughing.

"Soul said you were naïve, but this is the cutest thing!" She guffawed, the strangest hint of a purr in her voice. As she removed her hat, Maka stared flabbergasted at what she had just displayed.

On the top of the woman's head, sprouting from her purple hair, were two cat ears. Twitching, fluffy, very familiar cat ears.

"B-Blair?!" Maka burst out.

Blair grinned, displaying sharpened canine teeth as she set her hat back on her head. "The one and only!" She mewed.

Maka could do nothing but stare at her. Blair tilted her head, her smile dropping.

"Something wrong, Maka? You're standing in the way of my door," she said, setting her hand on the blonde's shoulder. The sudden contact jolted Maka out of her paralysis and caused something within her self-control to snap.

"So you're a cat?!" She screamed, startling Blair. The cat-woman jumped back, her hair frizzing slightly. "You're a cat, Soul's a shark; what's next? Is Black Star actually a monkey? Is Patty a squirrel?! Any other people-animals I should know about?!"

Maka's back slid down the door as soon as soon as her outburst was over, causing her to fall to her knees on the porch. Arms crossed over knees as she pulled herself into a tight, secluded ball, setting her head on her arms to complete her disgruntled position.

After a moment, Maka felt another body slide down against her. One glance to the side proved that it was Blair, while the cat-woman mimicked the green-eyed girl's pose.

"I suppose this is kind of overwhelming, huh?" She mewed, a slight sigh riding on her words.

The blonde turned her head back to face the other way. "I thought that was pretty obvious," she muttered, narrowed eyes glaring at the garish and peeling orange paint of the porch. She waited for a moment, wondering if Blair was going to reply, but she continued when silence met her words. "I mean, I came to Port Morte for college. To learn about facts. But in the few days I've been here, it seems like everything I've ever known has been turned on its head. There's a sharkman, there's you, there's said sharkman promising to stalk me, and Crona's freaking out more than usual," she said.

Maka felt Blair shift her position next to her. "Well, the way I see it, you came here to learn, right?"

Maka nodded, not looking at her.

"Then just take this as a learning experience," added the cat. "You're learning that there's more in the world than your textbooks'll tell you."

The blonde's shoulders sagged slightly. "But it was simpler when everything was in textbooks…" She murmured.

She felt Blair's shoulders shrug. "You've just got to learn that not everything's what it seems, that's all. It isn't all black and white; some things are and some things aren't, but most things are in-between," she explained. Maka moved to peer up at her, and found the purple-haired woman to be smiling at her. "Even people are like that, you know. What they are one moment may not be what they are in the next."

Maka nodded, showing that she was following her words. Blair giggled slightly. "Once you learn to see the world, and people, as individual and complicated wholes, then you can truly love them," she ended with a purr.

The blonde found herself relaxing, even to the point where she subconsciously made slight tugs at the edges of her lips. Her smile fell quickly, however, when she gathered a buried message in the cat's words.

"Wait… 'Love?'" She questioned. "Who am I supposed to love?"

Blair seemed shocked for a moment that Maka had caught her, but she soon adopted what she must have thought to be an innocent look, even though there was obviously an air of cunning to her words.

"Oh, nobody!" She giggled again. "Blair just likes hooking people up, is all!"

Maka grabbed the cat-woman's arm forcibly. "Hooking up who?!" She snapped. Blair simply laughed in reply, obviously enjoying herself despite Maka's distress. "Who are you hooking me up with?!"

"What are you telling her, Blair?"

The blonde whipped around in surprise, her emotions getting the better of her before she took a moment to identify the condescending voice.

On the front porch steps before them, wearing no more than a single pair of swim trunks decorated with cartoon sharks, stood the sharkman.

"Soul," Maka addressed him curtly. He barely glanced at her, instead watching Blair.

"Just talking about girl things," grinned the cat. "I did my job, though. She said nothing about you all day!" She announced. Soul nodded, grunting slightly in approval.

Shock struck Maka's face. "Wait…" She spoke slowly, her gaze flitting between Blair and Soul. "You told her to spy on me?!" She shouted. Jerking into a standing position, she stormed at Soul. "Do you realize how much trouble I got in because of your cat?!"

"I'm not his cat!" Blair protested. "He just sleeps in my house and feeds me."

Maka blinked at her incredulously. "Yeah. You're his cat," she deadpanned. Blair stuck her tongue out at her childishly.

"You said you didn't want me to follow you around," replied Soul calmly, "So I had Blair go instead."

"He said if I did that, that he'd forgive me for leading you to the dock and would start feeding me fresh fish again!" Blair exclaimed cheerily, her moods swinging as quickly as a typical feline's.

The blonde growled slightly, irritably, as she rounded on Soul. "Cats aren't allowed on campus!" she proclaimed. "We can't have pets! Crona wasn't even allowed to bring her goldfish!"

Soul visibly gagged. "Good for her; goldfish taste disgusting," he said.

Maka rolled her eyes. "She wasn't going to eat it, idiot," she snapped. "Who eats goldfish?"

The white-haired man coughed. "Blair said they were good," he mumbled under his breath, and then added, "Blair was wrong."

"Goldfish are delicious," protested the cat. Both Soul and Maka ignored her.

The blonde sighed, deciding not to question him further. "Anyway, not the point. The point is, she can't follow me around, either. I'll get in trouble," she said. Soul rolled his eyes.

"Then what am I supposed to do?" He shot back. Maka shrugged sarcastically.

"I don't know; trust me?"

"No."

Maka rubbed her temples. She quickly determined that she had two options: either face severe punishment for having a cat, or subject herself to humiliation and embarrassment from having a supposed stalker.

"Then… I guess you can follow me," she resigned with a drop of her posture. "At least I won't get in trouble if that happens. You could, but I'd be left alone," she said.

Soul smirked slightly. "I won't get caught. Remember, I have years of experience in hiding from people," he boasted, pointing a thumb to his chest. "In fact, there was one time that I-!"

Maka was too surprised to move as Soul stopped speaking suddenly, interrupted by the loud snapping of wood splintering beneath his feet. His arms flailed uselessly, as if he could somehow regain balance by flapping like a spastic seagull. The efforts ended in predictable failure, and the sharkman, so graceful and fluid in the ocean, fell like a rag doll down the porch stairs.

Soul promptly ended up on the ground and clutched his head, cursing Blair's weather-worn stairs, while Maka tried in vain to hold back giggles.

"Having fun down there?" She grinned.

Soul scowled at her in reply. Even so, Maka noticed a change come over his countenance after he watched her for a minute, as if he was somehow intrigued by her laughter. Eventually he picked himself up, brushing stray sand from himself.

"Yeah; loads of fun," he spoke, appearing slightly disgruntled, but Maka could see in his eyes that the grumpy disposition was fake. "Well…" He spoke again, clearing his throat. "You came here to have me lecture you, right?"

Maka nodded while her laughter quieted. "Not exactly lecture, but I want you to answer my questions about the ocean," she said.

Soul didn't take his sight off of her when she walked past him and down towards the beach. "Why? Do you have a quiz soon or something?" He asked, tailing her.

"Because I want to learn about the ocean from the perspective of someone who lives in it," the blonde answered. Turning to grin at him, she added, "Plus, learning new things is fun."

Soul's lips pressed into a thin line in annoyance. "What are you, six?"

Maka shook her head, pigtails swishing from side to side across her small shoulders. "Just a college student with a shark for a stalker," she replied. "Now, tell me your secrets, oh fishy one."

Soul released a long, drawn-out sigh. "Why did you have to be a nerd?" He said under his breath. Maka jerked around sharply, suddenly brandishing a thick copy of _Les_ _Miserables_.

"What did you just say?" She demanded through clenched teeth, a harsh smile stretching her lips. The white-haired man shrunk back, his eyes widening in shock and fright. "Answer carefully; this book has given people stitches."

Soul seemed to having trouble choosing the right words. "Uh… I just said that, um… I don't mind nerds?" When Maka's grip tightened on her book, he paled. "I mean that you're definitely not a nerd!" He blurted out.

Satisfied, the blonde nodded and resumed walking back towards the beach. She smirked triumphantly, an extra lift in her steps as she treaded out onto the dock. Running steps behind her prompted her to rapidly step out of the way, just in time to see Soul dash past her, jumping from the dock and into the ocean. Maka stared at the ripples on the surface, until Soul's upper half burst from the blue. He shook his head back and forth, freeing excess water from his white locks, and Maka gazed at the tail that had formerly been his legs.

"Alright, Maka," he announced, the flustered red from his face fading under the chill of the ocean, "Ask away."


	5. Substitute

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 5: Substitute**

* * *

Maka pried open the door to her dorm after six o'clock. Her legs ached from biking and walking up and down hills, which resulted in her complete lack of acknowledgement towards Crona as the blonde hauled herself over to her bed. With a slight groan, she lackadaisically fell face-first onto her pillows.

"Where were you?" Her roommate spoke up, her quiet voice tinged with worry. Maka rolled over on her back, both because she couldn't answer Crona with her face in a pillow and breathing had been getting difficult.

"I was studying the ocean around here with an expert," she replied, sitting up. "He taught me a lot, actually." While what she said was true, it had taken a while to get Soul to answer her questions honestly. When asked what kinds of dolphins frequent that coast, Soul had replied snidely that the only dolphins in that area were the ones that were hard to chew, and he had similar answers for her questions about turtles and fish. Even when Maka decided to choose her queries more carefully and instead began asking about coral, he continued to reply cynically. Only when she brandished her novel again did the sharkman begin to take her seriously.

Crona seemed to perk up slightly. "Did you learn about manatees?" she asked eagerly.

Maka smiled at her friend's words. "I don't think that they come this far north, Crona," she said.

Crona's shoulders slumped a little. "We're not too far north… And Tsubaki said she'd seen some, remember?" She set her feet on the floor, somewhat twisting herself from side to side in her swivel chair. "So, who did you go with? Did you know him before or…?" She paused, frowning. "Did you just meet him on the street? That's not safe, Maka."

The blonde shook her head, her loose hair hanging down her back and moving slightly against the skin exposed by her tank top. "No, I met him yesterday," she said. "We agreed that if he told me about the ocean, then I'd…"

She cut herself off. She couldn't tell even Crona, she realized. Any more than what she had already said would be breaking her promise to Soul.

Crona tilted her head slightly, confused. "That still seems like a short time to know someone," she said. "What did you agree on?"

Maka watched her friend. She was sure Crona wouldn't tell anyone; the gaunt teen had repeatedly proven herself loyal in the blonde's eyes. Despite that, she had sworn to Soul that she wouldn't speak a word about him to anyone at all. Even her closest friend was no exception.

"I'm sorry, Crona," she said softly, clinging her arms. She hated what she was saying, but a promise was a promise. Besides, she needed to give Soul a reason to trust her. Maybe then he'd leave her alone. "But I promised that I'd never tell anyone. I trust you," she said quickly when Crona opened her mouth to disagree, "But I want him to trust me."

Crona was still for moment, but then she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. She was silent, and Maka thought that she had accepted her words, when softly she spoke, "It's the shark, isn't it?"

The blonde stiffened. Perhaps she was easier to read than she thought. "W-what gave you that idea?" She spluttered.

Crona pulled her legs tighter, directing her sight towards the wall next to her. "You're stuttering," she mumbled. "You stutter when you lie."

Maka gulped. The pink-haired teen was right, after all. "Well…" She started slowly, her shoulders rocking back and forth; another nervous habit of hers.

It was Crona's turn to sigh. "So it was the shark," she said.

The blonde's mind raced as she bit her lip. She needed to get the subject away from her and Soul, and fast, or she knew that she'd end up spilling her words.

"Why do you think he's a shark?" She asked swiftly. However, when Crona's body tensed, she knew that question might've been better left unasked.

"It's… Uh…" Her friend fidgeted in her seat, "N-no reason…"

Maka couldn't help but feel disappointed at her roommate's reaction. After knowing Crona for over five years, this was the first time that they had openly kept secrets and lied to each other. It sat about as well with the blonde as one might sit on a cactus, but she couldn't change it, at least not then. Besides, she knew most of the facts. Crona had seen that Soul was a shark, and that Blair wasn't just a cat, so she could obviously perceive things that normal people wouldn't be able to detect. It probably was similar to her own "soul perception," but on a more physical level. Like some type of magic.

Maka sighed. Magic just wouldn't leave her alone, she thought ruefully, her eyes turning downwards. Everything had seemed so simple and normal up to the moment that she had discovered magic's existence, back before reality's façade began to chip away.

Crona seemed upset as well. She met Maka's eyes for a few moments, until she slid her legs off of her chair and set them back on the floor. "I'll tell you sometime," she said quietly, turning away once more, "Just not today."

Maka nodded. "Whenever you're ready," she said.

* * *

Crona wasn't ready for the rest of the evening, and neither was she willing to talk the following morning. The fact that Soul could occasionally be seen trailing Maka didn't seem to help the pink-haired freshman's nervous disposition, and her actions and words only became more skittish.

"Crona," Maka set her hand on her friend's shoulder, causing her head to jerk away from the blank whiteboard and her wide eyes to stare at her.

"What?" She almost snapped. The blonde sighed.

"Crona, you're getting really worked up," she said. "I think you need to talk to me about what's going on; I can help you."

Her friend's gaze swiftly pulled away from Maka and began darting about the room, as if she were tracking a frenzied bug that had made its way into the building. Maka waited for a moment, but her face fell when she realized that Crona had no intention of speaking to her. She exhaled slowly, turning back to the front of the class. She tapped her fingers on her desk, distracting her slightly from her friend, while additional nervous energy caused her to look towards the clock.

"Professor Buttataki's late…" She noted softly. Crona didn't acknowledge her, instead pulling out her notebook and scribbling snake doodles on the first blank page.

"Excuse me, class."

Maka's attention whipped towards the woman that had suddenly appeared at the head of the room. It wasn't as if she had materialized out of nowhere, but she had somehow slipped in unnoticed, like a snake that had silently slithered inside. She wore a black knee-length dress that was possibly too formal for a college class, with white arrow patterns accenting her waist and hips, and her flaxen hair was carefully and methodically arranged so that it was shoulder-length in the back, while the sides formed a long braid that was unconventionally tied together on her front. Her amber eyes appeared to be both cold and sparking with intentions that Maka couldn't identify.

Glancing towards Crona, the blonde immediately felt the sheer panic coming off of her in waves. Her entire body was trembling violently, and her arms grasped each other as her teeth clattered like the room was freezing. A tiny whimper escaped her lips, her eyes nearly rivaling the size of dinner plates while she watched the woman before them. Her behavior was even more terrified than how she had acted before Soul and Blair.

"I have an announcement to make," Spoke the woman, standing before the teacher's desk. "Firstly, you may address me as Ms. Gorgon."

With that tiny piece of information, dreadful clarity washed over Maka. Her expression immediately hardened, up to the point that her features were contorted with rage as she realized why Crona had reacted the way she did. It took all of her willpower to keep herself from jumping away from her desk and punching Gorgon in the face.

Maka and Crona had first met during Maka's first year of high school, and even then, the blonde could tell that there was something terribly wrong with Crona's home life. The pink-haired teen appeared to be half starved, and she would flinch whenever someone raised their arm around her. She never wanted Maka to come to her house to study, either. Even so, the green-eyed teen was the first person to get to know Crona, also making her the first to put the pieces together.

The very same woman that had abused Crona Gorgon into the malnourished, skittish, and fragile girl that she was stood before Maka at the head of the classroom.

"Secondly," Gorgon continued, every syllable from her mouth compressing Crona further into her chair, "Mr. Buttataki hasn't arrived on campus today. We've received no phone call or any other form of communication from him to give us any clues to his whereabouts. So I'll be teaching his chemistry class today and until we can get ahold of Buttataki," she stated. Her eyes landed directly on Crona, and her daughter's entire body blanched and held still, petrified under her gaze. A ghost of a smirk settled on Gorgon's lips, but it was gone as quickly as it had come as she added, "I believe that this will be a learning experience for all of us."

* * *

"Ow."

Maka glanced up from the chum bucket to Soul, who was wiping blood off of his hair.

"Try to aim for the water, pigtails," he muttered, rubbing his head a little. "Chum's heavier than you think."

"I know it's heavy; I'm the one throwing it," she grumbled passively, tossing another piece into the water.

Soul audibly huffed. "Well, quit throwing them like you're angry with them. They're already dead, so I don't think you can do much to chum," he said. He was simply drifting listlessly in the water, his torso and upper body above the surface, while the rest of his body resembled a shark's. When he appeared like that, it was easy for Maka to picture him as some sort of merman.

She extinguished the thought. Soul was the exact opposite of a whimsical merman, entirely unlike the ones from childrens' movies or the explicit pages of a cheesy romance novel. He was rude, demanding, and his breath constantly reeked of raw fish. In addition, he was the secret that she was keeping from Crona, she reminded herself irritably, and one of the reasons that her friend wouldn't talk to her.

"When are you going to show me how a shark feeds?" She asked, trying to take her mind off of Crona. "You said you would; that's the whole reason I brought this chum out here, remember?"

Soul pushed aside a rotting chunk of dead fish that floated next to him in the water. "I tried to, but this stuff tastes disgusting. What's it made out of, goldfish?" He stuck his tongue out.

Maka kicked a bit of water at him. "Black Star said that it was grade-A chum," she shot back, but her keen eye noticed when Soul backed away from the splashing water. A few stray droplets landed on his chest anyway, and the blonde's keen eye noticed that small scales formed where the water fell.

Soul quickly tried to wipe his skin dry, but Maka had already formed a theory.

"You don't have much control over your transformations," she said slowly, "do you?"

The white-haired man glanced up at her briefly with those ruby-tinted eyes of his, until he turned his gaze down to his hand.

"Not really," he admitted. A placid tone carried on his voice, but Maka could tell that it was superficial, simply a cover-up for true emotions that he was keeping a mystery. "I've learned to change my form myself, but scales show up wherever my skin gets wet."

To prove his point, Soul dipped his left hand into the water for a few seconds. Maka watched closely as Soul lifted it to reveal the almost glittering white scales that had replaced his flesh. They faded back into skin after a few seconds of being above the waves.

"It's especially bad if I drink anything when I'm in my human form," he continued. "The second liquid goes down my throat, my lungs will try to adapt to breathing underwater. But I obviously can't do that on land, so then I have a hard time breathing for a good few minutes."

Maka's gaze traveled down to Soul's waist, where small scales could be seen forming and receding as he drifted on the tide. His other hand was buried in seawater past his wrist, while he flicked water off of his left one.

"You seem kinda irritable today," Soul's voice jolted Maka away from his hands. "What's got your pigtails in a twist?"

She paused in her melancholy to narrow her eyes at him. "Stop talking about my pigtails," she snapped. Soul quickly raised his hands up in defense.

"Alright, alright," he said. "Calm your pig-I mean calm down!" he corrected himself swiftly when Maka held _Les Miserables_ above his head threateningly. "I just asked what the problem was. Is this about that pink-haired kid I saw you chasing around campus?"

Maka took her eyes off of him, turning her attention back to the sliced, bloody, putrid mess of fish that sat in the bucket next to her. "Yeah. That's Crona," she mumbled. "She's not talking to me. I think she's avoiding me because she doesn't want to answer my questions. But this is the first time we've kept secrets from each other, and I don't think either of us are taking it well." She shot Soul a small glare. "It's not helping that I have to keep you a secret, too."

Soul expressed no sympathy, instead running his hands through the water absentmindedly. "Was that the girl that could tell I was a shark?" He asked, a hint of concern riding in his words.

Maka opened her mouth to answer, but she abruptly stopped herself. A man she barely knew didn't need to hear any more about her friendship problems. She shouldn't have even told him anything in the first place, she scolded herself. Why she was spilling her troubles to a freak of nature, however, was a question that she couldn't answer.

"Not your business," she said curtly. "Eat your chum."

Soul crossed his arms stubbornly. "I'll only eat it if you tell me," he demanded. "It's important."

Maka glowered slightly. "What would it mean if I said yes?" She asked, treading carefully onto Soul's question.

He paused for a moment, but he never took his eyes off of her. "If she knows I'm a shark, then I have to know why. Maybe other people can tell, too. I need to protect myself," he stated. "If it's not the same person, then fine. But I still want to know how that girl yesterday could tell."

The blonde shifted a little, and tried to act as if she were merely uncomfortable rather than nervous. So much for keeping her troubles to herself, she sighed inwardly, resigning.

"Crona was the girl that could tell you were a shark," she admitted quietly. "But I have no idea why. She even could tell that Blair wasn't just a cat," she said. Abruptly, all of her concerns began forcing their way out of her mouth without her permission. "She's been so on-edge lately. I understand that she's stressed during her first week of college, but there's something else going on here. It can't be a coincidence that her mother showed up in class today. At least…" She paused, "I think it's her mother. Crona really freaked when she saw her," she recounted with a frown, "And how many people have the last name 'Gorgon?'"

Without warning, a rough hand grabbed Maka's ankle. The blonde shrieked a little as her eyes darted down to Soul, who stared back up at her. An odd but intense mix of fear and anger plagued his eyes, the emotions meeting in a crimson cacophony.

"Did you say that her name was 'Gorgon'?" He almost rasped, as if the breath had been knocked out of his lungs. Maka's eyes widened, and she slowly nodded. Soul's grip tightened on her ankle, and Maka wondered briefly if he was aware that his fading scales were digging into her skin.

"Was she blonde? Were her eyes gold? Did she have a snake with her?" He asked quickly, his questions pouring out like writhing fish dumped into water.

Maka shied back somewhat, trying to pull her ankle from his grip. Soul didn't notice, and she was unsuccessful. "Uh… Yes, yes, and no," she stammered. "Now could you please let go of my ankle?"

Soul didn't move. His eyes stared directly ahead of him, narrowing into a hateful glare as his broad shoulders moved up and down with large yet shallow breaths. "Maka," he spoke, his low voice nearly quivering. He looked towards her once more, and the blonde almost shied away from the combination of fury and horror that was reflected in his eyes. The next words that he pushed from his lips sent chills down her spine.

"That woman is a witch."

* * *

"Crona?"

The pink-haired teen froze in her tracks.

"Crona, did you hear me?"

She could hear her own heartbeat in her ears. It was _her_. That vile woman shouldn't have come to her college. For a few brief days, it had been Crona's sanctuary. For the first time in her life, she hadn't gone home to a mother with a syringe. She had been free. The fact that she had managed to get to college in the first place was nothing short of a miracle.

Yet the witch had followed her.

Crona's fear of the woman behind her caused her instincts to clash. She wanted to run away from her, but she wondered if simple submission might be a better choice. She jerkily moved her head to look behind herself and sized up her enemy. The abomination did nothing but smile pleasantly at her.

"You left a few of your things in my classroom," Medusa spoke warmly.

Crona nodded. "O-oh…" She stuttered, her voice shaking along with the rest of her body. "I'll g-get them tom-morrow." She began walking again, desperate to get away from her mother, but a cold, firm hand on her shoulder stopped her escape.

"Really? I think it would be much better if you got them now. Don't you agree?" The blonde's voice feigned innocence.

Crona felt as if her stomach had dropped down to her feet. She quickly and fearfully understood that flight was no longer an option. Her only choice was to go with Medusa and hope for the best, she admitted to herself. Even though she knew that hoping for the best when following Medusa was like going into the ocean and hoping not to get wet.

Slowly and shakily, she nodded. She could see the hidden smirk playing in Medusa's eyes, but it never spread to the rest of her face.

"Perfect," she said. "Right this way." She turned around, and Crona followed her closely. To turn on her heel and bolt the other way would be asking for injury.

"Oh," Medusa sighed, putting her hands on her hips after closing the classroom door behind Crona. "I'm sorry; it looks like you didn't leave anything here, after all." Her voice slowly dropped, until she was breathing ice that sent chills through Crona's entire body. "But while you're here, perhaps you could answer a few questions," she said, seating herself on the teacher's desk.

Crona's eyes flicked towards the door. Her mind raced with hasty calculations about the probability of escape.

"Don't even think about it."

Medusa's harsh tone caused Crona's attention to settle on her once again, though her grey eyes never stayed in one place. They constantly shifted around, not meeting the gaze of the woman she had hoped to never meet again.

"I need you to tell me a few details," The witch spoke, her voice low and commanding. There was no trace of the welcoming smile that had previously sat upon her features. "First, tell me about the shark you saw. What did it look like?"

A lump of anxiety formed in Crona's throat, near choking her and preventing speech. Medusa frowned.

"Perhaps I'm not making myself clear."

Out of thin air, a long black snake appeared in Medusa's hand. Silently, it slithered away from her, down the desk and onto the floor, where it headed straight for Crona. She felt her mouth go dry.

"What did it look like?" Medusa repeated, firmer. Crona backed away from the serpent.

"H-he…" She whimpered. The snake suddenly darted forward and wrapped itself around Crona's ankle.

"Speak up," Medusa commanded.

Crona gulped. "He had white hair!" She blurted out, before quickly slamming her hands over her mouth. Her mother never did anything good towards anyone she encountered. If she was specifically looking for that man, the teen knew that she shouldn't tell her any more about him. Even if he was a shark, no one deserved to be the subject of Medusa's wrath.

"Good," The witch said, although she didn't look pleased in the slightest. "What color were his eyes and scales?"

The snake began climbing up Crona's leg, the sensation sparking a host of memories that she would have rather never experienced again. Her terror struck her into speaking.

"R-red eyes," she said, and then spoke louder, "and w-white sc-scales."

The snake paused for a moment as Medusa looked down towards her desk. "It's him, alright…" She murmured quietly to herself. Crona didn't have a moment to wonder who she was talking about before the snake resumed its ascent up her body, making its way up her torso. "Is that all you know about him?" After Crona's quick and sincere nod, she continued, "Do you know anyone who might know anything more about this shark?"

' _Maka_.' The word rang in Crona's mind, but she pressed her lips together tightly. Maka was the last person she wanted her mother to go after. She shook her head back and forth, squeezing her eyes shut. She could feel the snake entwine itself around her arm, but it was long enough that its tail still brushed across the skin of her bare ankle.

"Are you sure?" Medusa said, but Crona covered her ears with her hands and nodded. If she couldn't run, maybe she could block her mother out. She simply had to hold off until the custodian came to clean the room, which shouldn't be long; it was already four in the afternoon.

However, her plans were forgotten as soon as the snake began winding itself around her neck.

"You're hiding something from me."

Medusa's voice was much closer than it had been a moment ago, close enough that Crona could hear her through her covered ears. Her eyes snapped open in shock.

"Naughty child," sneered the witch. "Covering your ears when your mother's simply trying to have a conversation with you." Her hands swiftly reached out and grasped Crona's fingers, gripping them to the point of hurting her as she wrenched them away from her ears. Her daughter cried out in pain.

"Now, tell me," Medusa growled, as the snake started to tighten itself around Crona's neck, "Is there someone else who knows about the shark?"

Tears began blurring Crona's vision, but she nodded mutely. Medusa's stoic iciness didn't waver.

"What's their name?"

Her daughter closed her lips tight. She refused to do that to Maka; handing her over to Medusa was comparable to wrapping a noose around her best friend's neck. But even as she thought this, her own noose was tightening.

Medusa's eyes narrowed into snake-like slits. "Tell me their name," she hissed. "Tell me everything you know about them. Each and every detail, no matter how insignificant."

Crona shook her head again. Her fingers flexed and straightened, still held to the side by her mother, though they itched to loosen the snake's grip around her neck that only tightened by the second. It almost had its entire length around her throat now, with its tail sliding up her arm.

"Crona," Medusa said firmly, grabbing her daughter's pink hair and pulling it, forcing her to look up at her instead of towards the floor. "If you do not tell me what I want to know, choking won't be the end of this," she swore. "I'll drag you home, away from this pathetic little school and the career you're working oh so hard for," she mocked, as her other hand released Crona's fingers. Black-painted nails decorated with yellow arrows scraped across the pale skin of the thin girl's cheek, drawing tiny droplets of ebony-colored blood, as the witch whispered, "And then I'll start the experiments again."

Her child froze still.

The experiments.

Violent memories suddenly broke into her mind, digging through her conscience and shredding it, along with her resilience to protect her friend. Cold nights strapped to a metal table, tools digging into her flesh, replacing her blood with liters of thick, black liquid; her experience as a virtual lab rat was one she would do anything in her power to never repeat again.

Her lips parted, struggling to form words. Her oxygen was rapidly running out as the snake's coils grew ever tighter.

"Ma…" She began to rasp. The snake's grip loosened as Medusa started to smirk in satisfaction. Crona gulped down her last shred of empathy before clearly speaking.

"Maka," she murmured. "Maka knows about the white shark."


	6. Reptile

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 6: Reptile**

* * *

Maka felt as if her dorm room had landed itself in the arctic. Even though the temperature exceeded eighty degrees, even though the fan was off, and even though the green-eyed teen had her comforter pulled as tightly around her as a caterpillar cocooning itself, the absence of Crona chilled her more than the coldest winter she had ever experienced. Maka hadn't seen her friend since returning from Soul's.

The blonde pulled her blanket tighter around her small frame, if that was even possible, as she shivered and closed her eyes. In the farthest corners of her mind, she almost hoped that Crona would be on the bed across from her when she opened them again, and that the entire evening had simply been a nightmare.

It wasn't true, of course. When Maka's green eyes opened into the dim light of her dorm, Crona's bed remained empty and unkempt. She sniffed, so focused on Crona's crumpled bedsheets that she almost didn't notice the quiet rapping on her window.

Maka's eyes snapped open. Her judgement and cautiousness extinguished themselves in that moment as she swiftly turned in her bed and shoved open the window. Maybe it's Crona, she hoped. All she had to do was open the window, and her friend would be on the other side.

Blair leaped onto Maka's bed from the windowsill, yawning and stretching her limbs and small paws. The optimism drained from the blonde's face as she settled back down onto her bed.

"Hi, Maka."

She nodded curtly, not meeting the red eyes of the man outside her window. "Hello, Soul," she murmured. She watched Blair instead, while the cat kneaded Maka's mattress to her comfort.

"You okay?"

His low words surprised her. The blonde turned her head to face him, and she then noticed emotions in his eyes that she hadn't detected before. Concern was the most glaring, while faint shades of remorse and regret flickered in and out of his pupil.

"Crona hasn't come back," Maka spoke softly. "I haven't seen her since I left to visit you this afternoon."

Soul leaned over, resting his arms on the windowsill. "Sorry," he said. His somber tone promised sincerity.

Maka hung her feet off the side of her bed, her toes settling on the small strip of carpet between her bed and the wall. "You know how I left right after you told me that Gorgon was a witch?" She asked. Though it had struck her as slightly odd that she accepted Soul's outlandish claim so quickly, she didn't dwell on it for very long. She was willing to believe almost anything after what had been happening to her over the past few days.

"Yeah," Soul replied quietly.

She continued, "I rushed back here as quickly as I could, but I couldn't find Crona anywhere. I found Gorgon, but she insisted that she hadn't seen Crona since her class."

A slight growl escaped Soul's teeth. "I wouldn't trust anything that witch says," he snapped.

Maka frowned. "I didn't believe her," she replied. She turned to Soul again, half-grateful for a distraction from her Crona problem. "And just what are you doing at my window at midnight?" She asked.

Maka could practically see Soul's train of thought swerve off of its detour and back onto the main tracks. "Oh yeah," he said slowly, scratching the back of his neck, "That." He cleared his throat unnecessarily. "I, uh… I've been kind of a jerk."

The blonde raised an eyebrow. Soul was silent for a few seconds, before his features became slightly annoyed. "This is the part where you tell me I haven't been a jerk," He said.

Maka shrugged. "You were," she deadpanned. Soul bared his teeth a little.

"Look, I came here to say that I'm sorry," he said, pointing an accusing finger at her.

"At twelve in the morning?" Asked Maka. "Couldn't you have just waited until I came to you later?"

Soul pulled his arm back. "No," he mumbled.

"Why?" Maka continued to question him.

Soul rolled his eyes. "Cause I wanted to show you something to make up for it!" He hissed, crossing his arms over his chest.

Maka blinked; that was unexpected, in addition to being a statement that she didn't quite know how to respond to. Soul replied for her.

"So get out here so I can take you to it," he said.

She hesitated. She wasn't quite sure if she completely trusted Soul yet, although the fact that he hadn't killed her before then was reason enough to trust him. But in case Crona came back, she didn't really want to leave the room, either.

As if reading her mind, or perhaps noticing the uneasy glance Maka cast towards Crona's side of the room, Soul spoke up, "Blair can watch for Crona."

The cat growled irritably at him, but Soul retaliated quickly. "I'll get you tuna," he bargained. "Fresh tuna."

The feline blinked at him for a moment, before promptly hopping over to Crona's bed and shooting Soul a salute using her tail. The shark chuckled.

"She'll stay here and watch for your friend. She'll text me if she comes back," he assured Maka, who didn't even bother to ask where the cat's phone was. It wasn't worth it.

She slid off of the bed, grabbing her flip-flops and pushing her toes between the plastic. Her instinct nagged at her, reminding her that this was obviously a bad idea. Even if he hadn't eaten her – yet – Soul was still a man. They couldn't be trusted, if what she had witnessed as a child was any proof.

Maka repressed the memory. There had been nothing in Soul's eyes that had even hinted at any dubious intent. With that, she pried the window open all the way and she swung her legs outside.

"I've got you," Soul said quietly, stepping forward. He then gently but firmly placed his hands on Maka's waist and eased her down to the ground.

"Thanks," squeaked Maka, though when Soul pulled his hands back, she almost caught herself wishing he would've kept them there for just a moment longer.

Soul nodded. "No problem," he said. It may have been the low light, but his face looked as if it had slightly more color to it than usual. Maka didn't have much time to observe him, however, before he turned away from her. "This way. I'll sneak you out the way I snuck in," he said, before moving away from the dorm building. Maka silently followed.

The ever-present scent of salt grew stronger as Maka tailed Soul across back roads, through small neighborhoods, and over dunes. As their journey wore on, every step the blonde took reminded her that she hadn't slept at all that night, and her feet began to grow as heavy as her drooping eyelids.

"C'mon, pigtails, we're almost there," Soul urged her on from the top of the sand dune. "Just over this dune here. We don't want to be late."

Maka groaned. "We're not supposed to be climbing the dunes anyway," Maka lectured wearily. "It's bad for them. And us. We could fall into a sinkhole and suffocate to death."

"You're real cheerful when you're tired, you know that?" Soul said sarcastically. The blonde simply rolled her eyes as she scaled the sand to stand next to him. Though the wind continuously whipped Maka's sloppy pigtails across her vision, she repeatedly pulled them away and looked out over the scene before them.

The moon reflected on the sea's disquiet surface, illuminating the beach so that the sand appeared to be ivory, while the roars of the ocean and the wind were indiscernible from each other. The occasional cry of an apparent insomniac seagull broke the white noise of the waves.

Maka was sure that she would've appreciated the beauty of a beach at midnight if she were more awake. However, she wasn't, and the only thing she appreciated at that moment was her welcome bed back in her dorm.

"So, it's pretty," she yawned. "Can I go back now?" She turned to Soul, ready to walk away, but he grabbed Maka's hand excitedly and pulled her down the dune.

"It hasn't started yet," he said, his voice monotonous, but his eyes displayed his eagerness. "Just be patient."

"What hasn't started yet?" questioned Maka, stumbling after him. Sand filled her flip-flops, and with every hurried step she feared that she would crash into Soul and send them both tumbling onto the beach. The shark didn't answer her as he pulled her along, seemingly unbothered by the shifting sand beneath their feet. Maka offhandedly noticed that he was barefoot.

Soul only stopped when they reached a rough part of the beach, a few yards beyond the tideline, covered with tiny bits of driftwood and crushed seashells. Wordlessly, he plopped down onto the ground, pulling Maka down next to him. The biting wind made her shiver, wrapping her arms around her legs.

"I don't see anything," she mumbled, but Soul only squeezed her hand and pointed towards the sand ahead of them. Maka glared at him grumpily, tired of the shark's vague words, but movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

Small black forms began emerging from the sand not three feet before them, crawling forward from the beach as if born from the sand itself.

"Sea turtles," whispered Soul.

The tiny creatures' flippers flailed around, pushing themselves towards the ocean, as the others continued to crawl from the sand behind them. The wonder of the scene was like an enchantment.

"Soul…" breathed Maka, enraptured. "It's… They're beautiful."

Soul smiled next to her. "I saw a few of them hatch yesterday night, but it didn't look like there were enough for the whole clutch," he said. "I knew that the rest would probably come out tonight."

"It's amazing," she said. "Thank you for bringing me here."

They sat in silence for a moment, watching the turtles make their way into the surf, where they seemed to dissolve into the ocean.

"You're welcome," Soul uttered softly, his grip on her hand tightening a little. Maka hadn't noticed that he was still holding it. Strangely enough, she found that she didn't mind much, and she didn't bother to move.

Turtles continued to pull from the sand, now creating a continuous path from their nest to the waves.

"How'd you know that their Mom laid eggs here?" She asked.

Soul shrugged a little. "You get to know where your meals are gonna be, I guess," he said.

Maka didn't reply at first, remembering that Soul wasn't quite what he seemed. When he walked around with legs, acting like any normal young man, it was easy to forget about his other skin. That there was a larger-than-life shark constantly waiting to show itself whenever he touched water. He wasn't human.

"What happened?" She murmured. Soul glanced down at her.

"What do you mean?" He asked. "The mom turtle came and laid her eggs. That's how it works."

She shook her head. "No, I meant…" She paused, looking back towards the ocean. "I meant what happened to you. Why you're not human."

Soul audibly gulped. "Oh. That," he mumbled. Maka glanced at him.

"If you don't want to answer, that's fine," she said quickly, but Soul shook his head.

"No, I'll answer," he sighed. "I planned on telling you eventually, anyway."

Maka pulled her knees to her chest, settling down to listen as she watched the turtles.

"It started over a hundred years ago," Soul began, "It's a big cycle of revenge, really. My dad decided to become a witch hunter when they killed his parents. He drowned witches whenever he found them, and tried to do the same to Gorgon when he found her. Medusa Gorgon's her full name, by the way." He hunched over, his rough hands brushing across the sand beneath their feet and revealing tiny shell fragments. "But he failed, and she got pretty ticked off with him," he explained. "She cursed my Dad as punishment, and swore that every man in my family would drown. Dad was the first to go, and my brother Wes died a few months later."

Maka's face fell. Witnessing Soul's rather laid-back, snarky attitude, she never would've suspected that he had been put through something like that. She tightened her grip on his hand, though Soul didn't seem to react to her touch.

"By that time I was really mad at Medusa, and I was enough of an idiot to find her and try to kill her with a handgun," the shark smiled sadly. "I was stupid. Really stupid. But I did almost kill her." His tone almost carried an air of pride, but then his voice fell again. "She nearly sliced my head off my shoulders. Mom got there just in time."

One of the turtles accidentally tripped, flipping itself over on its back. Its tiny flippers flapped around as it struggled to right itself.

"She bargained with the witch, and said that she'd give her life to save mine," Soul continued. Horror briefly flew across his face when he added softly, "I'll never forget the smirk Medusa got on her face."

The wind gradually died down around them, though the sound of the waves didn't falter. The stream of turtles began to lessen, with only a few new ones pulling from the sand.

"She told Mom that she'd give me a counter-curse that promised that I'd never drown. Mom agreed, and all I could do was sit there and watch as the witch cut her down. Then she turned her magic on me," he said. "Turns out her counter-curse wasn't as great as she pretended. She saved me from drowning by turning me into a shark. Until the day she kills me for good, she swore that my life would be nothing but torture." He put his arms over his knees and rested his head on top of them. "Sweet gal, Medusa. So merciful," he added sardonically.

Maka stood, making her way over to the struggling turtle. She gently lifted him up and set him upright. "Why is she after you now, then?" She asked quietly, while the turtle's large, dark eyes focused on Maka for a moment, as if wondering why she would help him, but then he turned and inched his way after his family.

Soul ran a hand through his snow-white hair. "To finish what she started, I guess," he said. "'Course, not knowing when she was going to try to kill me was enough to make me feel like I had an axe hanging over my head, so that's one problem solved."

Maka walked back towards Soul, sitting next to him again. "So how old are you?" She wondered, her last words turning into a yawn.

Her companion shrugged. "Beats me. Somewhere over one hundred-fifty. I lost count," he replied ambiguously, and said no more.

The blonde pursed her lips, trying to think of what else she could learn about Soul while he was in a talkative mood. "Were you born here?" she said after a minute of silence between them.

He shook his head. "I found that little bay pretty soon after I was cursed and figured out that Blair had set up her home there. I was really lucky to find her," he said. A twinge of jealousy pulled at Maka's stomach when he talked about the cat like that. "Turns out that she was a witch's familiar, but she killed her witch and stole her magic. I offered to feed her fresh fish, and in return she helps me by giving me clothes and swim trunks," he said. "Plus, she gave me a house and a bed to sleep in, which is much more comfortable than trying to sleep in the ocean, believe me."

The last turtle, the one Maka had helped, crawled into the ocean's foam and was gone. "Do you like being a shark?" She wondered.

Soul laughed humorlessly. "No. I hate it, really. There's a reason it's called a curse."

Maka peered up at his distant eyes as he watched the sea. "Looking back, would you have done anything different to prevent the curse from happening?"

He met her gaze idly. "You ask a lot of questions," he said.

The blonde leaned towards him , prodding him slightly with her elbow. "Come on; humor me."

Soul sighed, and his crimson sight found the ocean once more. "Well, I wouldn't take revenge. But, if I had the opportunity to kill that witch now, I'd take it. I don't have anything left to lose." Maka almost missed the strange look he gave her as he spoke, both sorrowful and regretful.

"You should be heading back now," he murmured, taking her mind off of him. She immediately groaned.

"I don't wanna walk back," she whined sleepily. She could almost hear Soul roll his eyes.

"Fine, then," He grumbled. Before Maka knew it, strong arms had wrapped themselves around her legs and back and lifted her into the air. "But you have classes tomorrow."

Maka groaned again, but didn't reply; she knew he was right. Instead, she curled up tighter, thinking for a moment that she wouldn't mind if he carried her like this more often.

Like the ocean's rolling tides that pulled the young hatchlings out into the surf, Soul's gentle, rocking gait carried Maka into dreams of sea turtles and sharks as she slept in his arms.

* * *

Back in high school, Crona would often hide herself if she felt overwhelmed or anxious. The quiet corner in the back of the library because her sanctuary during these moments. The faux leather armchair and the nearby poetry books seemed to welcome Crona with open arms, providing much more comfort and security than she received normally. Maka always knew that she could find her friend there, her long legs curled up under her while she was comforted in the works of Matthew Arnold and John Keats.

Fortunately, Morte University had a similar nook in the rear of the campus library. Unfortunately, Crona couldn't be found there.

It had been Maka's last option. She had barely been able to sit through her classes when all she could notice was Crona's empty desk next to her. Since her last lecture of the day, she had spent all of her time scouring the campus for her friend. Despite Maka's best efforts, Crona wasn't allowing herself to be found.

The blonde had grabbed her bike, ready to plunge herself into a desperate and likely futile attempt to head off campus and try and find Crona in town, when a foreign hand on her handlebars stopped her.

"Excuse me, Ms. Albarn? Do you have a moment?"

Maka recognized the voice instantly, and resisted the urge to scowl.

"I understand that you're about to leave, but could I occupy a little of your time? I have a favor to ask you."

Her green eyes slid upwards to meet the golden irises of the woman before her, whose expression looked entirely innocent. However, Maka didn't trust her worth a bucket of chum after what she had heard from Soul and seen from Crona.

"Of course, Ms. Gorgon. What do you need?" She smiled politely. She'd play her little game.

Medusa smiled warmly. "Wonderful. If you could just follow me," she said, leaving Maka to chain her bike back onto the rack and tail after the witch. She freely glared at the woman's back as they walked.

"What do you need help with?" Maka repeated, relying on her fake smile to keep the resentment out of her voice.

Medusa walked into her classroom, pushing aside a few papers on her desk. "Well, I've heard that you know of an excellent shark fishing spot nearby," she said calmly. "Would you mind sharing it with me?"

Maka's knees locked up in terrible realization. She _knew_. It was hidden behind false pleasantries, but the witch's knowing and triumphant gaze revealed that she knew Maka she had met Soul. She obviously knew what she was doing, and her words' true meaning glared Maka in the face like the emotionless gaze of a predator with prey in sight.

The door to the classroom slammed shut with a flick of Medusa's wrist, trapping the two inside, and the blinds slipped closed immediately after as she moved to sit herself behind her desk. She folded her arms in front of her and crossed one leg over the other. "What I mean to say is, I seem to have misplaced my shark. And you're going to bring him back to me."

Maka swiftly shook off her shock and allowed her eyes to narrow. Her lips turned downward in a scowl as her fists clenched to the point of shaking. "No," she shot back. "I wouldn't do that to him." To her surprise, Medusa began to smirk.

"Of course not," she chuckled, "Not for nothing. I didn't come to bargain without anything to give in return."

The teen frowned. Her eyes narrowed, searching Medusa's own gaze, but she suddenly felt as if she was staring at a concrete wall. She knew there was something behind the barrier, but all she could see was a blank surface. Medusa's eyes were entirely empty of any emotion beyond her obvious expressions.

The witch's laugh broke Maka out of her thoughts. "This is what the average eye sees, Maka Albarn," she grinned. "You must feel so blind."

Maka gulped down a growing nervous lump in her throat. She had never found someone with eyes as entirely devoid of secrets as Medusa's, and it was one of the most uncomfortable things she had ever felt. Carefully, she covered her anxiety with more anger towards the witch. "How do you know about that?" She spat.

Medusa's grin only grew wider. "I'm sure my shark has told you about witches?" She paused for a moment, but didn't wait long for an answer. "Soul Perception is a common witch's ability. You obviously have witch's blood somewhere in your family tree; you wouldn't have that skill any other way. But, naturally, other witches came up with ways to counter Soul Perception, which is how I won't let you see any further than what's on the surface." She grinned again, "The same reason Crona can see shapeshifters."

Maka hadn't realized she was shaking until she tried to grab the doorknob. The metal vibrated beneath her palm until she gripped it and tried to turn it, but it didn't move.

"I'm afraid that you're not getting out of here until you tell me what I need to know," spoke the witch, causing Maka to whip around to her again. "Though I'm willing to offer you a deal."

The teenager turned to look at her again, her back against the door. "Unless you know where Crona is, you don't have anything that I want," she muttered.

Medusa raised an eyebrow. "Don't I?" she said before shrugging. "Honestly, I have no idea where that child is. But if you give the shark to me, then I have my ways of finding people."

Hope flashed across Maka's eyes, but she shoved it back down. "Crona wouldn't want you to find her, especially if it put someone else's life in danger," she snapped. However, Medusa had her attention now, and she was sure that the witch knew that.

"Really?" Medusa said innocently. "That's too bad. But I have another offer." Her smirk revealed itself again. "I can find _her_ , Maka."

The teen froze, and her breath caught in her throat. She couldn't know. There was no way the witch knew about her.

"W-who are you talking about?" Asked Maka, but the stutter in her voice betrayed her and caused Medusa to grin once again.

"Why, your dear mother, of course," she hummed. "You haven't seen her since you were thirteen, have you, child? Poor thing. Five years is much too long to go without your mother." Despite her words, Medusa's voice didn't hold the faintest touch of sympathy.

Speech failed Maka. Memories of her mother had grown hazy; she hadn't even talked to her in years. Occasionally, she'd get a postcard from some far-off place, reminding her that she was still alive, but she wouldn't write much more than a few seemingly random words of encouragement, and her daughter couldn't reply to her ever-changing address. Maka still held out the hope that one day she'd come back, and when that day came, she wanted her mother to look on her with pride, in awe of the woman she had become. However, with each passing year of absence, it became harder for her to believe that her fantasy would become reality. The suggestion that Medusa could grant her wish caused the young blonde's resolve to falter.

"You really could find her?" She found herself asking. "You could find Mom?"

Medusa nodded. "Absolutely," she smiled. "It would just take a few simple soul-searching spells. Child's play." She looked Maka in the eyes, causing her to feel as if the witch was staring into her desires and pulling them like puppet strings.

"And then…" Maka hesitated. "Then… You'll bring her to me?"

Medusa beamed pleasantly. "Of course," she promised. "And all you have to do is find a way to bring my shark back to me. It shouldn't be hard; you're a smart girl." She winked.

Her student turned her gaze downward. "All I have to do is bring Soul…" she murmured to herself.

All of a sudden, Maka felt as if she wanted to heave her lunch out onto the floor. Her own words made her sick to her stomach. What was she doing? Soul depended on her. If she revealed him to Medusa, it'd crush him. He'd hate her, and that fact hurt more than it should have.

"No," she growled. Medusa frowned.

"What was that?"

Maka glared daggers at her. "I said NO!" she shouted. "I won't do that to Soul! Besides, if Mom wanted to see me, then she would've come back to me herself!" The words hurt to come out of her mouth, but they were her only weapon against the witch's temptations, so she willed herself to keep talking. "I don't want to force her to come to me against her will. And I won't force Soul to come to you, either," she swore.

Medusa stood from her seat, her own gaze hardening, and Maka watched as her compliant demeanor fell away like a ripped curtain. "Then I suppose I'll have to pull out a different bargain," she growled, holding her hand out. "How about this." Out of nowhere, a black snake materialized from her palm and slid to the floor. "Let's say that if you agree to bring me Soul," she hissed as the snake slithered towards Maka, "I won't kill you."


	7. Shark

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 7: Shark**

* * *

Maka stared at the snake in front of her, which slithered closer with ominous leisure. Gradual, calm movement assured the prey that its predator was confident, and it gave time for the victim's fear to rise. As if it knew this, the snake coolly eyed its chosen target, whose quickening heartbeat prepared her for flight or fight.

But if she were to flee, where would she run? The door was locked, likely by some power of Medusa's, and Maka Albarn was no coward. Flight was never even an option.

Though her sight was focused on the snake, the blonde scanned the space around her out of the corner of her eye, probing for anything to defend herself with. The flagpole hanging over the whiteboard was an option, though it was quickly ruled out due to how high up it was. After giving herself a brief second to curse her average height, her thought process was drawn to the trashcan next to the door. If she could get a hold of that, she gathered, she could be able to either trap the snake under it or bash it with the base. Both would probably enrage the reptile, and it was likely that Medusa would simply call up another one, but at least it would give her a few more seconds to come up with a better plan.

Within a matter of moments since the snake had first begun its path towards her, Maka swiftly reached over and grabbed the plastic trashcan. Medusa barely had time to react before her target slammed the bin over her snake, who hissed furiously, but Maka held her weight over the upturned can. Medusa released a slight growl of irritation as she started towards the smaller blonde, who squeezed her eyes shut as she tensed up.

"Get off my snake," hissed the witch, grabbing one of Maka's pigtails and pulling roughly, "Or I'll rip this pretty little head off your shoulders right here and now."

Maka's taught body began to tremble. It was taking most of her strength to hold down the supernatural snake, but Medusa's words injected venom into her skin that spread like an infection through her bloodstream. She wasn't going to get out of this, she thought as her hope dwindled and Medusa pulled upward. She was dead meat. She'd never see Soul again.

"YOU HIDIN' IN HERE?!" Black Star's sudden shout interrupted them suddenly, and the door was thrown open as if the lock were made of cardboard. Medusa swiftly jerked away from Maka, and with a barely noticeable snap of the witch's fingers, the furious hissing from the trapped snake ceased. Her former victim whipped around to glare at the loudest freshman on campus, who peered around the room with a black eye.

"Huh. He's not in here," he said, scratching his unruly blue hair. His eyes then settled on Maka, prompting a grin. "Hey, Maks! Whatcha' doin' in here?"

The younger blonde quickly picked herself up, standing rigid. "I… Uh…" She stuttered, her voice dry.

"Maka simply came in here for a little extra tutoring," Medusa spoke up, setting her hand on her student's shoulder. Her grip tightened dangerously, her elegantly trimmed nails digging into the fabric of Maka's t-shirt and practically stabbing into her skin. "I'm afraid she's not quite done yet, and she doesn't need any distractions. Would you mind leaving us?" Asked the witch with a voice so sickeningly sweet that Maka could almost taste the poisoned sugar rolling off her tongue.

Black Star eyed both of them for a moment, one arm hanging limp at his side while his other hand still remained on the doorknob. A coy smirk quickly spread across his mouth when he stepped forward and gently took Maka's other shoulder.

"Nah, Maka's smart. She doesn't need any extra tutoring," he beamed at Medusa, pulling Maka away from her. "I'll just show her some of my notes instead, 'kay?"

Medusa smiled politely at him. "But Maka requested this session personally," she said, but the younger blonde was already on her way out the door behind Black Star. "If she won't continue today, then she'll have to catch up later!"

Maka stopped in her tracks when Medusa's well-disguised threat met her ears. As quickly as the witch had spoken, however, Black Star poked his head back inside the room.

"She ain't interested," he said curtly, and soundly pulled the door closed. No sooner had he done this than he slung his arm around Maka's stiff shoulders and resumed walking.

"So what's up?" he said loudly. "I was lookin' for a guy who tried to flirt with Tsubaki. I punched a few of his teeth out, but then he rounded on me and gave me this beauty," he grinned as he pointed to his black eye. "I promised to knock his lights out and throw him off the science building if he tried that again, and you could almost see the guy turn yellow before he ran the other way. Pretty sure he hid somewhere around here, so I was looking for him, but I found you instead!" He laughed, but his voice quickly and unexpectedly dropped to a whisper. "That didn't look like tutoring to me."

Maka jumped slightly and turned to face him. The blue-haired teen's eyes were concerned, and the smirk on his face was barely holding. "Are you alright?" he asked, in a tone far more gentle than the blonde had thought she was capable of.

"Y-yeah," she said shakily. Black Star's hold around her tightened slightly.

"Wanna talk about it?" he asked slowly, to which Maka shook her head. Her friend sighed a little. "Okay. You don't need to," he reassured her. His voice rose again, loud and cheerful. "But I'm gonna personally walk you back to your dorm, and there's nothing you can do to stop me!" He grinned.

Maka smiled, relaxing more with every step she took from Medusa's classroom. "Thanks, Black Star," she said. He winked.

"Anytime."

They walked like that for a few minutes, and though Black Star took his arm off of her after a while, Maka still stuck close to him as her thoughts had a chance to collect themselves. She understood that Medusa wasn't going to let her off easily. She wanted Soul dead, and if Maka was standing in the way, the younger blonde didn't think that the witch would mind stepping over her corpse to get to him. Her revenge had been lying dormant for over a century, but now it was awake and hungry.

Maka shivered slightly as she realized this, but Tsubaki quickly ran up to Black Star and broke her from her thoughts. She quickly asked where he had been, but her boyfriend dismissed her with a wave of his hand and told her that he'd explain everything later. Right now, he said, he needed to get Maka back to her dorm. Tsubaki followed wordlessly as the small group of friends resumed their walk and almost overwhelmed Maka with their kindness.

* * *

Maka's feet swung over the side of the dock while she continuously popped mini pretzels into her mouth. Her bikini straps dug into her shoulders slightly; under normal circumstances she wouldn't have been wearing it, but the day was hot enough to warrant a swim.

"Come on, just one," pleaded Soul. Maka casually glanced down at him, ready to once more deny him of her food, but his pitiable attempt at puppy-dog eyes caused her to snort.

"You already said that you had a whole seal today," she objected, stifling her laughter as she very slowly crunched off pieces of the pretzel. Soul licked his lips.

"But I haven't had a pretzel in so long, Maka!" he whined as he propped himself up on the dock. He stubbornly grabbed for the bag, but the blonde deftly lifted it out of his reach and giggled.

"Do a flip," she said, waving the bag above her head.

Soul huffed, shooting her a small glare. "I'm not a dolphin," he muttered.

Maka shrugged idly. "No flip, no treat."

Soul rolled his eyes. "I don't even look like a dolphin," he retorted, turning his face away, but Maka noticed how his eye followed her hand as she fished another pretzel from her bag and carried it to her mouth.

"True," she said, making a point of crunching loudly. After a moment of thought, she added, "You look more like… A mako shark. A giant white mako shark."

The dock creaked slightly as Soul pulled as much of himself as he could onto the dock while still remaining mostly in the water. "A _hungry_ giant white mako shark," he corrected her, his hand wildly groping for the bag of pretzels. "Just one pretzel. Please?"

Maka shook her head and held the bag away from him tauntingly. "Aren't you a carnivore?" she asked.

Soul growled slightly, apparently getting tired of how she continued to draw out the conversation. "No. I like human food too. Like pretzels." He snatched at the bag. "Gimme."

The blonde watched his agitated expression for a moment. Maka was almost ready to hand over some of her snacks, when she noticed the shark's gills in detail for the first time. She had seen them before, but with Soul reaching over her to try and grab her food, the five horizontal slits in his neck were practically in her face. Snow white scales collected around them, and from what she could see, the scales trailed off behind his neck.

Soul broke her attention away from his gills when he finally managed to snatch her pretzel bag and pulled it down with him, his body splashing into the water. Cheekily, he grinned up at her.

"Mine," he said as he grabbed a handful of pretzels to shove in his mouth.

Maka sighed, but set her hands down on either side of herself and didn't say anything about it. She didn't care much about the loss; they were dollar-store pretzels, anyway. Instead, she observed him as Soul turned his back to her, which revealed to her how his scales weaved around his skin. Like tiny shards of white quartz, they flowed outward from around his gills and created a half-collar along the back of his neck, where the scales met and continued down his spine in a sort of dorsal stripe. A small white fin protruded from the stripe at his waist, and directly where that ended, the scales encased his hips and flowed downward to form his tail.

As if sensing green eyes studying his back, Soul turned around slowly, causing Maka to flush when he caught her staring. She swiftly turned away from him and pretended to be suddenly interested in the rusty nails that kept the rickety dock together.

After a minute of awkward silence, interrupted only by the sound of Soul crunching pretzels between his pointed teeth, Maka dared to break the tension.

"Can I…" she murmured softly, hesitantly, "Can I touch your scales?"

Soul stopped and stared at her. "Uh…" His mouth hung open slightly, but he closed it after a moment. "Sure, I guess."

Red dusted Maka's cheeks as she slipped into the water beside him, and Soul turned his back to her once more after setting the bag of pretzels down on the dock. Barely noticing the chill of the ocean, Maka treaded across the sandy seafloor while keeping her head above the small waves. Her hands settled on Soul's shoulders, but one brush of her fingers against his gills caused him to flinch, and she jerked her hands away quickly.

"Sorry," she squeaked out, pinning her arms to her sides. Soul's shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath.

"It's fine," he smiled, turning his head to face her. "Gills are just sensitive, that's all."

Maka started forward again. "I already knew that," she grumbled a little, but brought her hands back to his skin. Her fingers made a careful berth around his gills, barely brushing the white scales that surrounded them. The shark's shoulders shook slightly as he cleared his throat, and Maka paused, afraid that she had done something wrong again.

"So…" he started slowly, "Did Medusa give you any problems today?"

Her hands hovered over the base of Soul's neck, mouth going dry as if he had just poured salt down her throat. She had been hoping that he wouldn't ask about that.

"She came up to me after my classes," she spoke tentatively, yet swiftly. To her increasing apprehension, Soul didn't seem content with her rushed answer.

"And?"

Trying to distract herself, Maka focused her attention on the tiny scales along his spine. She said quickly, "She trapped me in a classroom, but Black Star came in and I got away." The muscles around Soul's neck moved beneath his skin, and Maka's eyes moved upward to meet the shark's discontented gaze before her green irises darted back downwards.

His low voice muttered, "That's not all of it." It wasn't even a question. Maka's hands curled into small fists against his shoulder blades, and she sighed resignedly.

"She wanted me to try and trick you into going back to her." Her hands slid down from his shoulders and followed the path of his backbone to try and distract herself, while His muscles tensed beneath her palms as she spoke. "She tried to make a deal with me. She…" the blonde paused, and her fingertips stopped where Soul's dorsal fin met his spine. "She said she'd help me see Mom again."

The shark's torso rose and fell with increasing rapidness as his worried breaths became audible. Maka frowned, solidifying her touch by spreading her palms out against his skin and scales.

"I really wanted to see Mom, but…" she paused, and she could feel Soul hold his breath. "I didn't tell her anything. I said no."

She pulled her hands away, stroking them along his dorsal fin before bring them to her chest. Vaguely, she saw Soul turn around to face her and felt his tail brush against her feet. "She threatened me next, but I still wouldn't do it. She tried to kill me then," she smiled ruefully. "I almost died for you, Sealbreath. I hope you're happy."

Soul's hand grabbed her shoulder. Maka pulled back slightly, startled, but he still caught her and kissed her.

The blonde's eyes widened in surprise, and the shark released his light grip on her almost immediately as he moved his head away. "Sorry," he said. Maka stared at him, and it took her but a moment to mimic him; taking hold of his arm, drawing him towards her, and silencing any further apologies with her lips.

The edges of his mouth were dry and rough, worn by the salt of the ocean. But his lips were full, and his head naturally tilted to the side so that their noses didn't touch. To Maka's pleasure, his breath didn't smell like seal, either. Both of his hands gently settled on her shoulders and held her closer.

When they broke apart again, she looked up towards him. For the first time, Soul's eyes displayed perfect relaxation as they swam with an emotion she could only describe as wonder. Suddenly, his expression turned sour, but his eyes only showed hints of irritation.

"Don't you ever be stubborn enough to let Medusa almost kill you again," he said sternly, his grip on her shoulders tightening slightly. While his eyes still appeared joyous overall, a shard of concern showed itself beneath his white eyelashes, and Maka couldn't help but smile at him.

"I'm not making any promises," she said. Soul soon smirked back at her.

* * *

The gears on her bike whirred rhythmically while Maka pedaled on the side of the road, cars passing her lazily under the afternoon sun. She had absentmindedly licked her lips so much during her adrenaline-driven ride that the corners were chapping.

She cheerily made her way inside the dorm building after parking and chaining her bike The blonde couldn't help but hum slightly as she walked with a spring in her step down the hall to her room.

Logical thought insisted that this was bad. She had seen how the relationship between her parents turned out. Besides, Soul wasn't even human. An ageless sharkman would make a horrible date for innumerable reasons.

But an ageless sharkman was a great kisser, argued the thoughts that were evidently infatuated. Any other protest made by logical reasoning couldn't be heard over the noise of the smitten side of her mind, which continuously replayed the sound of Soul's voice and the feel of his lips.

An eased sigh carried through Maka's mouth as she slid her card key into her door and swung it open. She carried herself dreamily over to her desk chair, where she gleefully spun around like a six-year-old. Once again, her logical thoughts said that a supposedly mature college student shouldn't have been twirling in circles in an office chair, but she ignored them.

"Are you okay, Maka?"

The blonde practically slammed her feet down on the floor, bringing the chair to an abrupt halt and almost tossing herself out of it. Her head swam from dizziness, so she pressed one hand to her forehead to try and press down the rush, and she barely managed to splutter out the name of the voice that had distracted her.

"Crona?!"

Maka's vision came into focus slowly, and she could see a pink-covered head nod from where the rest of its body stood.

As soon as she was sure that she wouldn't trip while walking five feet across the floor, Maka sprang up and instantly rushed to Crona and swathed her arms soundly around the thin teen, crushing her in a tight hug.

"Where've you been?!" the blonde all but screamed at her. "I've been really worried for you!"

She could feel Crona's body shrink back slightly, as if her friend was a turtle that was trying to retreat into its shell. She murmured softly, "I stayed in a motel…"

Maka backed up slightly, but still held Crona at arm's length. Her friend's eyes were nervous, darting around a little, and one of her hands rubbed against her other arm as she often did when she was uncomfortable.

The blonde attempted to calm her nerves. Crona didn't react well to loud voices, she reminded herself. "Why didn't you come back?" she asked, much slower and quieter. A tiny fragment of Crona's tension eased, but not much, and her arms wrapped around herself.

"I… I sold you out. To Medusa," she said softly. "I shouldn't have done that to you. I'm horrible."

Maka's grip tightened slightly. "No, you're not horrible," she said, "Your mother's horrible. Anything you told her, she forced you to say. None of it was your fault."

Crona began to sniff, turning her head downward so that her dusty pink hair fell across her face in strands. "But…" her voice broke, and she stopped to catch herself. "But I told her everything I knew about you. And things she could use to hurt you," she said, "She might try to go after you. She wants you to bring Soul to her."

Maka frowned. "She already has," she said quietly, and Crona stiffened. "But I didn't tell her anything, and I escaped. Medusa didn't hurt me," she assured her. "Nothing you told her worked."

Crona picked her head up. Her navy blue eyes stared into Maka's face, watery and blurred. "Really?" she said, "I didn't tell her anything really bad?"

Maka shook her head and put on a smile. "Nope. You didn't do anything wrong, Crona." "Nothing she ever says could get me to hand Soul over to her."

The corners of Crona's mouth showed the slightest upward tilt, and Maka beamed at her. "I promise there's nothing to worry about!" she said, jumping back. Crona only nodded, sitting down on her bed and wiping her remaining tears away with her hoodie sleeve. As she brought her arm down, she suddenly blinked as if remembering something important.

"Oh…" she said slowly, her voice hollow, "There was something else I needed to tell you."

Maka barely noticed her friend's dismal tone as she plopped back down in her desk chair, "I have something to tell you too," she said. There was no question whether she would tell Crona about her kiss; they were best friends, and Maka wasn't about to keep any more secrets, even small ones, from her again.

Both girls opened their mouths at the same time and spoke simultaneously, "It's about Soul."

Maka fixed her attention on Crona once more. The pink-haired girl was staring back at her, eyes wide.

A minute of stunned silence stretched between them, until Maka gradually spoke. "You go first," she said.

Crona turned her sight towards her lap once more, squirming slightly. "It's just that… Medusa told me about his weakness. A curse inside the curse," she said. Her voice dropped suddenly, until it was low and ominously quiet. "If Soul sees or smells human blood, he loses himself. His shark half goes crazy."

Maka's hand gripped the armrest of her chair, but she said nothing and Crona continued, her gaze distant.

"That's how she got to be the chemistry teacher, Maka," she whispered, her arms wrapping around herself once again while her legs bunched together. "She told me that she kidnapped Buttataki and took him out onto the ocean. She cut him really bad, and then threw him off her b-boat," her voice grew shaky. Maka felt her hand start to shake as her fingernails dug into the armrest.

"He w-was unconscious, and S-soul came almost instantly," she breathed. Her gaze turned upward to Maka, and their frightened eyes bore into each other's. "He k-killed him, Maka," her voice cracked.

"Soul killed him."


	8. Blood

**From Blue to Red**

 **Chapter 8: Blood**

* * *

Maka stared straight at Crona, shaking slightly. Nothing in her friend's eyes hinted that she was purposefully being dishonest with her; the poor girl actually believed everything she had said.

"You're wrong," the blonde murmured quietly. Crona visibly frowned, but she kept going. "What… W-what would Medusa have to gain from telling you this? She's probably just lying so you'll hate Soul…" She trailed off, unable to convince herself of her own words.

Crona shuddered and shook her head. "I don't think so," she replied. "I think she was telling me the truth. She wanted me to know how much power she had over Soul, and how strong he was." She rocked her shoulders a little as she added, "She could turn him into a weapon if she wanted, Maka. He's dangerous."

Maka gulped, swallowing a thick ball of her own anxiety. "S-Soul's not dangerous," she objected, turning away from Crona. "He wouldn't kill people."

Her friend sighed. "Are you sure?" Maka stiffened, but she couldn't find the right words to respond, and neither did she turn around to face Crona. "I'm just worried about you, Maka," she continued, "I don't want you to get hurt."

Maka didn't move for another moment, until she slowly she took a deep breath and smiled gently at her roommate. "I know you don't," she said, "But I also know that Soul would never try to hurt me. Trust me, alright?"

Crona nodded at her and changed the subject quickly, reminding Maka that she had missed over a day of classes and needed to study. But even as Maka shared her notes with her friend, the seed of doubt that the pink-haired girl had planted only continued to grow within her thoughts.

* * *

Maka let the ocean wash over her feet, squeaking slightly when she stepped forward and the rising tide chilled her calves.

"Yesterday you just jumped in," Soul sighed, his impatience obvious. He laid with his stomach against the beach, while the sea continuously flowed over his tail and prevented it from forming back into legs.

The blonde shot him a glare. "It was warmer yesterday," she muttered.

Soul groaned a little, setting his head sideways on the sand and closing his eyes. "If you're not entirely in the water in five minutes, I'm dunking you," he said. Maka quickly and huffily kicked up her heel and splashed him in the face, but the shark didn't even flinch and added, "I said that I would take you somewhere cool today, and I can't do that with you on dry land."

The water flowed up to her knees, deep enough that the recessing waves began to pull her out with them. The jeans that Soul had advised her to wear were slowly soaking with the freezing water.

"You never even told me where we were going," she said, but treaded further.

Soul yawned. "Just sightseeing," he replied nonchalantly.

Maka shivered as goosebumps began to form on her thighs. "It better be worth it."

"Ooh, is Soul taking you to his favorite spot?"

Maka staggered slightly in her surprise, losing her footing and stumbling forward into the ocean. She threw her arms out to catch herself, but a wave came in at that instant and washed over her.

For a small moment, she couldn't breathe. The sea enveloped her, and the goggles propped on her forehead were useless in stopping the saltwater from stinging her eyes. But just when she began to panic, she felt something rush under her and hoist her upward.

As soon as Maka's head was freed from the grasp of the ocean, she coughed up water onto her rescuer. Strong shoulders rolled underneath her hands, and her ears unclogged after a few seconds so that she could hear what he was saying.

"Maka! Can you hear me? Are you okay? Blair, look what you did to her!"

"Soul," she coughed, trying to get her voice back. "It's okay. I'm fine."

Soul craned his neck around to try and see her as she slid off his back. "But thank you for rescuing me," she smiled gently at him.

Her shark smiled back and righted himself in the water, just as Blair began spewing out apologies.

"I'm really sorry, Maka!" She mewed, her small tail swishing. Her paws clutched the side of the dock as she peered down at the two with wide, frightened eyes. "I didn't mean to! I just wanted to say hi! You'd seen me teleport before, so I didn't think it was a problem-!"

"No really, it's fine," Maka said, stepping over to the cat and scratching the fur behind her ears. "It got me into the water quick, anyway," she added, and Blair's agitated hackles quickly smoothed down under the blonde's touch.

She felt Soul's hand settle on her shoulder, and she turned around to face him. "Do you still want to go today?" He asked softly. "If you don't after what just happened, we can go tomorrow."

Maka shook her head, her wet pigtails slapping against her neck. "I can go today; I promise I'm fine."

Blair stood and stretched. "Well, if you're fine, then I'm gonna head back to my house," she said. She trotted off the desk, purring a little. "Have fun, you two!"

Soul crossed his arms over his chest as he watched the cat pad back to the orange house. "Man, her mood switches fast," he mumbled, causing Maka to giggle slightly.

"Of course. She's a cat," she said.

The shark seemed to relax a bit, and moved deeper into the water. "Did you bring the gloves?" He asked.

Maka nodded, grabbing the thick gloves she had placed on the dock beforehand. "Why do I even need these?"

Soul smirked. "I'm gonna need you to hang onto my fin when I take you out in the ocean. I'm a lot faster than you, and I don't want you getting behind in open water," he explained. "But shark scales are sharp, and I don't want to cut you. That's why I had you wear jeans, too."

Maka nodded in understanding, but her smile fell from her face when he mentioned hurting her. She eyed his pointed teeth as she said quietly, "Hey, Soul? You wouldn't…" she hesitated. The question suddenly seemed even more awkward than it had sounded in her head.

Soul frowned at her. "I wouldn't what?" he spoke, quirking an eyebrow.

Maka ran her fingers through her pigtails, feeling sand and amid her ash-blonde strands. "You wouldn't… Attack people, would you? Like as a shark?"

Soul's frown deepened. "Of course not," he said. "What gave you that idea?"

Her shoulders bunched up under his red gaze. "Crona said that you attacked and killed someone," she mumbled. "I told her that was stupid. It's stupid, right?" she added hastily.

Soul gave her a strange look. "Of course. You know I'd never do anything like that."

Maka nodded, but lowered her gaze as Soul approached her.

"I promise that I wouldn't ever attack anyone, and I never have," he said, placing a small kiss on her nose that caused her cheeks to dust with red. When she turned her sight up to him, he smirked at her, his sharp white teeth gleaming between his lips. "Now, do you want me to show you sightseeing, or do you not trust sharks?" He teased.

Gradually, Maka smiled back at him. She pulled her goggles over her eyes and nose, then slipped her hands into the gloves she had brought.

"I trust _you_. I've never talked to any other sharks," she joked.

Soul grinned, laying himself flat in the water. Maka didn't know quite what he expected her to do, but she noticed when he rolled his eyes slightly. "Just get on like you'd get a horse or bike or something," he said.

Maka made a sour face as she stepped to his side, grabbing his fin and throwing her leg over his back to sit on him. "This isn't awkward at all," she muttered sarcastically, settling herself. Soul shrugged.

"Whatever," he said. "I don't mind. Oh, and when we're underwater, tap my back if you need to come up for air. But I don't want to risk being seen, so I won't stay up long. Got it?"

"Got it," Maka replied. Soul nodded.

"Good. Now, take a deep breath," he said. Maka did as she was told, taking in one last large gulp of oxygen, and Soul plunged into the blue water.

The roar of the ocean filled the blonde's ears, pushing her hair away from her face as Soul thrusted through the water. Her fingers tightly clutched his dorsal fin and her legs clung to his sides. Scales began replacing his skin as he swam further, soon covering his entire body in white, and then the bubbles formed. Starting out small, the bubbles soon began flowing from Soul's scales. Multiplying and accelerating, they burst from him, filling Maka's entire vision. She felt him grow larger, his fin extending upward and his tail widening. When the bubbles cleared and she was able to look down at her ride, she no longer saw his hair swishing in the current or his tanned skin.

Soul had completely changed into an immense shark.

Maka stared at him. His gills moved open and closed, his strong hide swayed back and forth to propel them onward, his pectoral fins drifted at his side like small wings. His head was at least seven feet in front of her, and upon looking back towards his tail, she found it to be a good five feet beyond her legs. His scales glistened in the afternoon sunlight that rippled through the water, causing him to shine as if he were a small moon trapped in the sea.

Maka freed one hand and tapped his scales gently, and immediately Soul began to rise towards the surface. She took a large breath as soon as she was above the waves, but then Soul quickly charged downward again.

The number of fish swimming past them increased exponentially as they went further into open water, and on one occasion Soul changed their course abruptly to swim through a school of herrings. At first, Maka thought it was to show her the fish, but when his head moved suddenly and blood began to spill through the water around them, she grimaced and realized that he had ulterior motives. She patted his side to request fresh air, trying to erase the image of a hungry giant shark from her mind.

Bright colors in the distance grew ever closer, and Maka fought the urge to gasp and inhale seawater when the beautiful detail of a coral reef came into view. The majority of the fish darted to hide as Soul passed over them, but his passenger stared in awe at the colorful array laid out below them. Golden sea sponges, red sea plumes, green brain coral, and many other formations that Maka couldn't name were scattered across the seafloor. The occasional small fish flitted from one hiding place to another, dotting her view with flashes of blue, yellow, and orange. Schools of larger fish bunched together but kept their distance, and an unfazed sea turtle drifted below them, gliding through the water as if it were flying. A pod of dolphins played in the distance, but they came no closer to Soul than necessary and gave the reef a wide berth as they passed.

The two toured the length of the reef, with Soul cutting through the tide and maneuvering it like he were made of water himself. Eventually, however, he turned and began making his way back to the shore. Maka couldn't help feeling disappointed, but she knew that they'd have to go back sooner or later. In addition, gasping for air only when absolutely necessary had begun to make her feel a little lightheaded, and she was eager to breathe freely again.

The orange rays of the setting sun painted the sea with its reflection as they approached Soul's hidden cove. Bubbles began flowing from Soul again once the familiar dock was in sight, and Maka braced herself against the virtual gale, tightening her legs around his tail as she felt it shrink. The bubbles only stopped once Soul burst out of the water, revealing his human torso. His passenger gasped at the fresh air, drinking it in heavily.

"So what did you think?" Soul asked, turning his head to smirk at her. "Cool, right?"

Maka nodded as she panted. "It was… Beautiful," he said between breaths. "Do you go there a lot?"

"Yeah," he replied. "There's good eats." At Maka's slight gag, he quickly corrected himself. "But I also think it's pretty nice looking, and I thought you would think it was nice too!" He blurted, causing a smile to replace her frown.

"It was great, Soul," she said, sliding off of him as she pulled off her gloves. "Could you take me again sometime?"

The shark smirked again. "Of course," he said as he turned to face her. "Count on it."

Maka beamed at him, and Soul touched his forehead to hers. When he began to lean in, his eyes drifting closed, her own eyelids slid shut as she met his lips halfway.

His arms soon snaked around her waist, Maka's hands moved upward to hold his jaw. This kiss was different than their last two. There was less hesitation, more eagerness. They were no longer nervous; each wanted each other's lips, and they knew this. As his thumbs stroked up and down against her back, Maka realized that she had fallen so hard and so fast for a sharkman.

Her hands stretched upward, her fingers tangled in his hair briefly before they traveled down his neck, while Soul's thumbs rubbed circles into her back. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, bringing herself closer to him, stroking her fingers up and down the rough scales of his spine.

A sudden prick against her finger startled her. "Hey. Soul," she murmured against his lips, "hold up." She pulled away from him, investigating her finger. She frowned at the tiny beads of crimson from a scratch in her skin. "Looks like I cut myself on your scales, Soul," she sighed. "After you specifically told me not to. It's not a big deal, though." She looked back up at Soul, smirking a little. "Now, where were-?" Her words abruptly cut off when Maka realized Soul's eyes weren't focused on her own. They were hollow and cold, staring directly at her bleeding finger.

"Soul?" she said softly, the corners of her lips turning downward in a concerned frown, but Soul didn't respond. Instead, he grabbed her wrist, gripping it painfully in his clutches. Maka winced, fruitlessly trying to pull away from his unrelenting grip. Still the red-eyed shark said nothing as he brought her hand to his mouth. Her eyes widened. "Stop it," she said sharply, as he swiped the blood from her cut with one lick. He pulled harder on her arm, and lowered his teeth to her fingers. "Soul!" shouted Maka loudly.

He stopped. He blinked a few times, and focus and humanity slowly returned to his eyes. With one quick glance down at his hand, he jumped back, horror across his face. "What did I just do?" he breathed, staring at Maka's hand as she drew it to her chest. She stared right back, her green eyes wide.

"You don't know?" she asked. Realization flashed across Soul's eyes, but then the horror came back, stronger than before.

"I… Almost hurt you, didn't I?" he said slowly, backing away from her. "But I don't remember. If I don't remember doing that, then… what else have I done that I can't remember?" His suddenly small voice just barely reached her ears. The question burned on Maka's mind as well, but Soul's piercing red gaze silenced her. "I almost hurt you," he repeated. The blonde's eyes widened.

"Don't you dare," she said quickly. She knew where this was going; she had read enough romance novels to know what he was getting at, and she had no desire for it to happen. Even so, Soul continued to back up.

"I might've killed people," he spoke. Maka moved towards him.

"Stop that right now," she snapped, but her voice broke.

"I could've killed _you_ ," he murmured, looking as if he had been stabbed through the stomach. Before Maka could say anything else, he turned around and dove into the water.

"Soul!" she screamed, kicking off of the sand and trying to follow him. "Soul, you get back here-!" she tried to yell at him, but a wave washed against her and flowed into her mouth. She coughed, expelling the water from her lungs as he wiped more of it from her eyes. When she opened them, Soul was nowhere in sight.

Maka screamed his name until her throat was dry and she sneezed from being wet and cold, but he didn't come back.


	9. Blue

**From Blue to Red  
Chapter 9: Blue**

* * *

Blair had intercepted Maka when she came to the dock on Friday afternoon.

"What are you doing?" mewed the cat, sitting on the path. Maka didn't lift her sullen head and strode around her, but Blair got up and padded at her feet.

"Waiting for Soul," the blonde replied passively. Blair's ears dropped.

"Maka…" she said quietly, "I don't think he wants to come back."

Maka's fists clenched at her side. "He will," she insisted, sitting down at the edge of the dock and hanging her feet off the side. The high water level brushed the tips of her sandals while Blair sat next to her, curling her tail around her paws.

"He didn't come back until near midnight last night," she said, causing Maka's attention to turn to her. "But then he told me what happened. I think that after you left, he went frantic and tried to eat as much as possible so he wouldn't try to bite you, but that didn't work well," she mewed in a small voice. "His stomach was really upset and he was retching into the toilet almost all night."

Maka's eyes widened, guilt washing over her like the ocean beneath her feet. She should've stayed, she scolded herself. She should've waited until Soul came back. She should've been there for him when he was sick. Shaking slightly, her hands clutched the hem of her skirt.

"He slept a little, and then he went back into the water and took off," Blair continued, weaving around Maka's arms to lay down in her lap comfortingly. "But I set up a little barrier for him a while back, so he can't go far, at least."

The blonde sniffed. "You trapped him here?" she asked, and Blair rolled her shoulders a bit as if she was shrugging.

"Sort of," she said. "I was really lonely when he first got here. He was the only other shapeshifter I had ever met, so I wanted to keep him. I didn't want him to leave me, so I put up the barrier. He can't go much farther than the reef without my spell acting like a shock collar."

Maka began to feel hopeful. "So he'll come back? He has no choice, right?" she asked eagerly. However, when the cat turned her attention to her paws, the teen felt her optimism begin to slip again.

"Well," she mewed quietly, "The spell has a timeframe. I set it a while ago, so it'll wear off soon. And he doesn't have to come to land for anything; if he wanted, he could live the rest of his life entirely as a shark." Her forlorn golden eyes met the blonde's watery emerald irises, and she offered her a meager purr. "I think that he didn't want to come back because he loves you too much to risk hurting you," she said softly. "That was really sweet of him, wasn't it?"

Blair's further purrs and attempts to soothe her did nothing to keep Maka from breaking down into sobs.

The blonde frowned at the memory. Blair hadn't shown up since yesterday, perhaps because she didn't want to go out in the rain that drizzled relentlessly from the sky and soaked through Maka's clothes. She hadn't moved for hours. Her phone had buzzed in her pocket a few times, and she checked the messages to find that Black Star and the rest of his group had invited her on a tour of the town. When she didn't reply, they began sending messages to ask if she was okay. She had turned her phone off then.

Each white-crested wave seemed for a moment to resemble his ivory fin. However, the peaks would quickly break, leaving her to watch the rest of the sea for her shark.

Footsteps crunched along the gravel path, approaching the dock, but Maka didn't turn around to see who they belonged to. Whoever it was stopped directly beside the blonde, holding a black umbrella over her.

"You're going to catch a cold if you stay out here in the rain," Crona's soft voice gently chided her.

Maka didn't look up at her. "That's a myth," she replied monotonously, but her words ended with a small chirping sneeze. She heard Crona sigh.

"Maybe, but I know that your nose gets runny if you stay cold for too long," she said, sitting down next to her and letting her legs hang over the side of the dock. Maka said nothing, and neither did Crona, at least for a few minutes. But after a time, the latter spoke up again.

"I figured this was where you went," she said. "It's the wrong turn you took on your first day. I couldn't think of anywhere else that you could've been meeting Soul."

Maka only nodded. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Crona gave her a worried look, but the pink-haired girl then heaved a sigh and turned to watch the ocean with her. "I'll help you look," she offered.

They sat in silence for a while after that. Once or twice every ten minutes, Crona would excitedly point to a large wave's crest, but Maka would shake her head. It wasn't him, and the blonde knew that it never would be, no matter how much she hoped it was. After the fifth time Crona eagerly pointed to no more than a clump of seafoam, the blonde sighed.

"That's not Soul, Crona," she said. "It won't be. He's not coming back."

Crona's shoulders sagged. "But… Y-you can't just give up on him like that!" she shouted. "We'll see him, I'm sure! You just have to look hard enough!"

Maka shook her head, pulling her knees to her chest. "No, we won't. This is just like what happened with Mom," she murmured. "She left for what she thought was a good reason, and if I was in her shoes then I probably would've left, too, but she doesn't want to come back. She doesn't want to talk to me, and she doesn't want to see me. Just like Soul." As tears pushed that the corners of her eyes, she smiled ruefully. "They're both idiots. Big, stupid idiots."

Crona frowned, and put her arm comfortingly around Maka's shoulders, which shook a little with quiet sobs.

"He better come back," mumbled her roommate, and turned to glare slightly at the open water. "He made you cry. No one makes my friend cry and gets away with it."

The blonde paused in wiping away her tears to fix her friend in an odd look, but Crona wasn't paying attention to her. Her navy blue eyes remained focused on the waves, and Maka realized that Soul would likely get his nose punched in if he showed up at that moment. She had only seen Crona lose her temper at someone once before, and it had been a frightening sight she wouldn't soon forget. Her first boyfriend had made the mistake of breaking up with her in front of Crona, and after that ordeal, Maka was surprised when it turned out that his wrist was only sprained and not broken.

Nonetheless, despite Crona's anger towards the shark, she began to nod off once the clouded sky began to darken with the setting sun. Maka sighed when she noticed this, turning her attention away from the ocean as she stirred her friend gently.

"Crona," she said softly, her hand moving her shoulder a little. "If you fall asleep here, you'll fall off the dock."

Crona turned to her, blinking blearily. "But we need to look out for Soul," she yawned in protest. Maka tried to smile at her.

"No, that's my job. You should be getting back to our dorm," she murmured, but the bleary-eyed teen shook her head.

"If you stay, I stay with you," she said.

Maka almost rolled her eyes, but she pulled her stiff legs out from under herself and stood anyway. Crona's eyes were tired enough that they looked at her friend's outstretched hand as if she had never seen one before. Gradually, she took it, standing with Maka's help. The latter held the umbrella over both their heads as they began the long trudge back to their dorm, their shoes making squelching sounds on the wet sand.

* * *

Crona could go to sleep in almost any circumstance. If she was frightened for whatever reason, going to sleep could block out that fear for a little while. If she was angry, her own rage would exhaust her. If sadness crossed her mind, closing her eyes would provide rest from the pain. A state of contentment or happiness would lull her to sleep in an instant. Slumber was relaxing to her, and it was a luxury that she hadn't experienced often with Medusa.

So why, she wondered, could she not fall asleep?

She tossed in bed. She never tossed; she always stayed in the same position all night. The room was warm, yet the teen shivered almost violently.

Her navy blue eyes flicked over to Maka, who was asleep on her side, her expression troubled. The blonde shook her head a little and subconsciously turned onto her back. Crona wanted to try and comfort her, but she didn't know how to go about it. Instead, she turned away from Maka so she wouldn't be bothered by her pained features.

The notion that something was wrong pricked at the back of Crona's mind and settled like a lump in her stomach. Her gaze flicked back and forth between the door and the window. Even though she saw nothing out of the ordinary, her worry only continued to grow.

Without warning, the dorm door clicked open. Crona gasped, closing her eyes almost completely in an attempt to appear asleep, but she could still see through her thin lashes. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she struggled to control her breathing. She had thought that only she and Maka had room keys, which meant that whoever opened their door had done so effortlessly, but without a key. This scared the pink-haired teen further, and she shook beneath her covers.

As the figure stepped into the room, Crona was given a chilling explanation for the door's noiseless motions: her mother loomed in the open doorway.

The witch stepped in soundlessly, brushing past Crona's bed and towards Maka's. Her hauntingly golden irises glinted in the faint moonlight as she peered at Maka's fitful form, and though her mouth was in darkness, her daughter could see the smirk spreading to those eyes.

"I know you're awake, Crona," she whispered without even looking toward her, her quiet voice like the hiss of a snake. The teen's eyes snapped open entirely in fright, and she pulled her duvet around her tightly.

"What are you doing here?" her tiny voice quivered.

Medusa eyed her coolly, causing Crona to shrink back even further. "Just eliminating a few problems," she said. Her daughter jolted upright in bed as Medusa chanted a spell. Maka's sleeping form slowly lifted into the air, floating over to the witch to land soundly. She started to casually walk away, carrying the sleeping girl, when Crona leaped out of bed and seized her mother's arm.

"You can't do this!" she exclaimed. Medusa narrowed her eyes.

"You yell one more time and I will kill you on the spot," she growled, causing Crona to step back. The teen clenched her fists, shaking.

"Maka didn't do anything," she muttered, watching the ground with a terrified but angered gaze. "She's innocent; you can't just kill her."

Medusa hummed slightly. "Can't I?" she said. "She's directly interfering with Soul's punishment. The point was that he suffer for what he did, and this girl is easing his pain by simply being around him. We can't have that," she showed a smirk. "Besides, she's one of the only mortals to know about our kind. She can't be kept alive, or she might spill something." When Crona said nothing, she continued. "I figured the best way to do this would be to kill two birds with one stone. Or, more precisely," her smirk broke into a full grin, "Kill the girl with the very shark that would never hurt her in his right mind."

Crona whipped her head upward, her horrified eyes meeting her mother's smug ones. "You're going to get Soul to kill her," she breathed, her voice small with shock, "To torture him even more."

Medusa nodded, grinning like the psychopath she was. "Of course. Maybe there is a shred of sense in that pathetic little head of yours," she mocked.

Crona wrapped her arms around herself. "You're out of luck then," she whispered, more to reassure herself than to intimidate Medusa. "Soul left two days ago to protect Maka. He won't come back."

To her daughter's surprise, the witch let out a small chuckle. "You didn't sense the extra spell on him? I'm disappointed in you," she said. "Someone bound him to this coast. If he goes too far, the spell acts like a shock collar. He can't leave."

Crona's knees threatened to give out from under her. Maka wouldn't simply sit by if she were awake, she thought. Maka would fight back. But she couldn't; not while asleep.

Her limbs seized up with realization, fear, and a vague sense of bravery. Before she gave herself the chance to overthink her actions, she rushed at Medusa's back and wrapped her lithe fingers her neck. Medusa choked a bit, but she swiftly moved herself around to fiercely slam Crona into the wall behind her. The teen cried out in pain as she lost her grip, slipping to the ground in a crumpled heap.

"I don't suppose I have to tell you not to follow me," Medusa snapped, setting her foot in Crona's shoulder. The heel of her boot dug into her skin, causing her to whimper. "If you do, there'll be dire consequences."

With that, she picked her shoe off of Crona and walked calmly out the door, closing it behind herself without lifting a finger.

The shaking teen squeezed her eyes shut as searing pain flared from her spine and her head. She slowly attempted to pull her legs beneath herself to stand, but her head swirled with dizziness and forced her back to the floor. Prying her eyes open, she scanned the room for her phone, her last chance to help Maka. When she spotted it on her desk, she tried to rise to her feet again, though her vision blurred and the floor seemed to sway, causing her to fall onto her hands and knees. She cursed herself for being so brash as to attack Medusa, before she leaned against the wall for support and forced her legs to stand.

The trip across the floor was slow agony, but Crona finally managed to grab the device, holding it to her ear while her free hand gripped the desk to stable herself. Her phone's screen glowed as she switched it on, dialed the number, and hoped with all her soul that he'd pick up.

"Crona? Hello?"

Crona almost sighed with relief when she heard Kid's voice on the other end of the line.

"It's one in the morning." He yawned, interrupting himself. "Is something wrong?"

The pink-haired teen quickly collected her thoughts. "Yes," she said. "And I need your help. You said that you and your father owned a boat, right?"

* * *

The first thing Maka grew aware of was the cold wind whipping across her face. She noticed sound of the ocean second, and that the floor rocked beneath her, as if she were laying on some sort of boat. She groaned, sitting up.

"So you're awake. I was hoping you would - that would make this much more interesting."

Maka stiffened instantly. She turned her head towards the voice, only to find Medusa grinning at her from behind the speedboat's wheel.

"Where am I?" the teen asked immediately, to which Medusa chuckled a little.

"Why, the open ocean. I would've thought that much was obvious," she said, stepping out from the cockpit. Maka gasped; in her free hand, the witch brandished a knife. "Now that you're awake, why don't you scream a little?" she smiled politely, as if what she had simply just asked Maka a question about the weather.

The younger blonde skirted backward, but Medusa's speed bested hers. The witch snagged her right ankle, and to Maka's terror, drew the knife slowly across the bare flesh. She screamed, savage agony tearing its way up her leg and manifesting itself in her cries. She could feel her own blood spread across the floor, wetting her foot and the rest of her leg.

Maka felt Medusa hoist her upward and set her on the edge of the boat so that her bleeding leg dangled in the water. The salt that washed over the wound caused her to scream once more.

She could hear Medusa laughing at her as she whisked her leg from the ocean. The salt stung her ankle, and the blood pouring from it mixed with the water that dripped from her skin, painting the bottom of the boat and its upholstery in swirling red. Maka balled her shaking hands and attempted to collect her breath.

"The bait's laid," smiled the witch, from directly behind her. "Now we just have to wait for him to pick up the scent, and then your precious shark will-!"

She was cut off suddenly as Maka whipped around and punched her in the stomach.

"Don't you dare use me as bait for Soul," she growled while the witch hunched over and gasped for air. She turned her head up to fix Maka in a golden glare, but her captive turned her gaze away and looked around herself. They sat in a smaller speedboat that had gold-colored accents and appeared to be a Malibu. Her father had owned a Malibu. He had let her drive it on the lake a few times, although she always managed to purposefully throw him from the boat with her wild steering.

Her green eyes widened. She looked towards Medusa for a moment, who had moved to watch the ocean at the back of the boat, before her vision flicked back over to the steering wheel. She sat closer to it than Medusa, though if she made a move with her ankle in its current state, she'd have a slim chance of getting there before the witch caught up to her.

Even so, she knew she had no other option than to risk a dash for the wheel. Setting her jaw, and watching Medusa all the while, she began to stand. Her ankle shot searing pain up her leg whenever she put pressure on it, and she could feel the hot trickle of blood from her gash, but she quietly began to make her way towards the cockpit. The sound of the ocean drowned out her footsteps as she slid herself behind the steering wheel.

Medusa took that moment to turn around.

The instant she saw Maka, the witch's eyes blazed with wrath. "Get away from that!" she shouted as she rushed toward her, but Maka immediately started the boat with a jerk. As she switched all the speed dials as high as they could go, the witch grabbed her arm.

"I should kill you right now," Medusa growled while the boat picked up speed. However, with rage fueling her strength, Maka wrenched her arm away and turned the wheel a hard right. A small shout of surprise fell upon her ears, only to be swiftly lost in the hum of the engine and the roar of the wind across her face as the witch flew from the boat. Maka almost beamed when she turned to head to see Medusa land with a splash in the ocean.

Her triumph was short-lived, however, when the boat gave a sudden and tremendous lurch. The entire vessel flipped on its side, tossing Maka into the cold water.

The blonde gasped when her head broke the surface, treading water with frenzied motions. Unused to swimming in the ocean, she struggled to keep her mouth above the water and she tried frantically to peer over the waves, searching for whatever had tipped the boat. No reef was in sight, or any rock she could've hit it on, which confused her. She bit back a whimper as pain flared from her ankle once again.

A flash of movement to her left caused Maka to turn her head, but she saw nothing. It moved again directly in front of her, and the color drained from her face once she saw it clearly.

The large white fin circled her, spiraling closer with every movement of its quartz-like body, which glistened beneath the surface.

"S-soul?" She said, despite the fact that she could barely hear her own voice above the waves. The fin dove beneath the surface, and Maka could feel rough skin brush against her foot unsettlingly.

She opened her lips to say more, but all that came from her mouth was a violent scream as Soul bit into her leg.


	10. Red

**From Blue to Red  
Chapter 10: Red**

* * *

Pain blinded her. Her own screams sounded foreign and bestial as Soul's teeth dragged Maka under the surface. Her crimson blood mixed into the dark water, spreading as if a single wound could turn the entire ocean red.

She could see his teeth grasping at her leg, sharpened and serrated, somehow alike yet so dissimilar to the fangs she'd seen when he smiled at her. Her hands flew down to the rough scales of his nose, pounding them like she had seen in movies. If anything, it caused his jaws to tighten.

Maka's lungs began to burn for oxygen. She clenched her fists and hit him harder, fiercer, but Soul only shook his head from side to side, his eyes shining in the flickering moonlight. Those round, red eyes that had previously sparked with life had become devoid of human emotion, replaced with hollow spheres that might as well have been constructed from glass. They displayed naught but hunger, as if the infamous White Shark was simply a large, wild animal, and nothing more.

She knew he was more than that. The real Soul laid trapped beneath those scales, confined behind his empty irises. Frantically, her fingers gripped his nose as gaze dug around through his eyes, searching for a spark of his true self. A trace of his soul.

Soul stopped thrashing as they met each other's gaze, and Maka continued to focus on his eyes, even as her leg continued to pain her and her own blood got in the way of her vision.

From within his left eye, a fragment glittered suddenly. Her own eyes stung and blurred from the salt water, and her lungs had begun to heave in effort to maintain her breath, but once Maka caught ahold of that single shard of his soul, she honed in on it. She willed it to rise to the surface, a technique she had never used before, yet it seemed to be working.

Soul's eyes widened as clarity flashed across them. The shark suddenly wrenched away from her, his glistening body pulling back while he moved his head back and forth. Maka had hit something, she was sure of it. She had unearthed a fragment of his humanity. But right then, desperation for air overtook her. With a jolt, she realized that her lower leg had gone entirely numb, but she frantically started to swim upward anyway. The blonde's ears throbbed with the pressure as she threw all her might into moving toward the surface.

Maka gasped as she pushed herself above the waves, filling her lungs with air. A quick glance around herself revealed that the speedboat which Soul had capsized was filling with water, sinking as a slightly larger vessel approaching them from the coast. Searchlights flashed from it and faint shouts barely reached her clogged ears. She opened her mouth to cry for help, but Soul distracted her as he quickly rose from the water beside her, eyes wide and frightened. Yet before the blonde could move to him, he dove back under the waves. He dipped up and down, swimming haphazardly. Frantic one moment and hollow the next, the expression his eyes fluctuated between human and inhuman.

Abruptly, he froze and turned his attention on a struggling form further out on the ocean. Maka followed his gaze and noticed a blonde head bobbing in the water, arms flailing wildly. As some of the water drained from her ears, she started to hear her cries.

If Maka hadn't been scared for her life, she might've laughed at the fact that Medusa didn't seem to know how to swim.

Soul went underwater without warning, his fin sticking upward and creating a small wake as he charged at the witch. Medusa moved her head, and for the smallest of moments, she let her Soul Protect down.

Though she could barely see her golden eyes, Maka became stunned by the sheer and foreign amount of terror in the witch's gaze as she stared at Soul's fin. The teen only saw her for a moment, however, before Soul lunged forward. His sharp teeth grasped Medusa's torso and pulled her under the water in the blink of an eye.

* * *

Medusa struggled in Soul's grip. She felt her life slipping between her fingers, washing away with her blood into the ocean. Every fiber of her being refused to be taken down by her own creation, but those fibers were rapidly dying, one by one.

Her manicured nails dug into Soul's maw as she tried to pry his jaws open, but to no avail. His hold was like a vice, and her grip weakened by the second. The shark's eyes bore into her, reflecting both insatiable fury and fierce hunger. It seemed to her that his gaze also held a mocking, victorious tone,as if he was sneering in her face with those jagged teeth of his: " _I've won_."

Flesh, muscle, and bone snapped and ripped under Soul's bite. Though she could feel her life force giving away as Soul bit down harder by the second, the witch still found the strength to glare at him.

" _No, you haven't_ ," she wanted to snarl. " _If I go, then you're going with me_."

She placed her hand on his snout, and her palm began to glow. Soul went eerily still as Medusa leaned over him, ripping her own body against his teeth in the process, but she no longer cared. As long as she achieved her primary goal, the pain was nothing to her.

Red spilled into the blue as her own blood filled the water around her, flowing around their forms, while Medusa employed her final breath to release Soul from century-old chains. The sound of her voice was lost in the flow of the ocean, though the gravity of it didn't fail to affect them both.

"Drown."

* * *

"SOUL!" Maka cried, floundering in the waves. The boat came closer behind her, and she could hear the passengers' words clearly.

"Maka! Maka, is that you?"

"Maka! Stay right there; we'll rescue you!"

"WE'RE HERE, MAKA! WE'RE GONNA SAVE YOU!"

Despite their cries, the blonde began swimming towards where she had last seen Soul. Worry blazed through her almost as savagely as the pain from her right leg, although she couldn't feel anything below her knee.

"Soul!" she yelled again, weaker. Her head spun and the limbs that hadn't gone numb ached with the effort of keeping her afloat. When the moonlight revealed that the waves before her churned with crimson blood, she sucked in a deep breath and ducked beneath the water.

Through the dark and eye-stinging water, Maka could barely see. What faint light the moon provided appeared to do almost nothing to aid her at first, until she spotted a small white mass a little ways away, sinking rapidly.

The blonde immediately began swimming toward it with the startling suspicion that she could identity the white shape. As she neared it, she began to see the body that it was attached to, and her frightening theory was proven true.

Soul's hair flowed back and forth with the waves, his human body dropping deeper into the ocean by the second.

For the briefest of moments, Maka wondered why he wasn't a shark. But she didn't have the time to linger on those thoughts, not when his eyes were closed and his mouth hung slightly open as the water attempted to drown him. The green-eyed teen dove down and grabbed his arm, pulling him to the surface. Unconscious, Soul made no move to help. Idly, Maka caught a faint glimpse of a barely recognizable witch's corpse as the ocean's depths claimed it.

Maka burst from the water once more. Gasping for air, she held Soul's limp form in one arm, and used the other to flag down the boat.

"Over here!" She screamed as she struggled to keep Soul's head above water with her depleting strength. The boat moved towards her, and many arms reached down to grab her and pull her aboard. She shoved Soul towards them first, and only after she was sure he was safely on the deck did she allow herself to be lifted onto the boat.

"Maka!" cried Crona, pushing through the small crowd of her friends as Maka collapsed, panting. "Maka, are you… Oh, Maka…" She cut herself off, throwing her hands over her mouth as her voice began to quiver. Tsubaki and Liz shared a gasp.

"Maka… Your leg," the blonde squeaked quietly, while Kid tried to take the dripping girl's arm.

"Come on, Maka. You should lay down," he coaxed her. Despite his gentleness, Maka glared at him and wrenched her arm away.

"Where's Soul?!" she shouted, pulling away from him. Before Kid could answer, she spotted Soul's motionless form. Maka panted as she rapidly dragged herself over to him, despite the concerned cries of her friends. "Soul!" she said and grabbed his face in a panic. He didn't move at all, nor did any breath escape his lips.

Eyes wide and mouth hanging open with terror, Maka started to frantically press her hands to his bare chest. Quickly and in succession, she pushed on his torso in a desperate struggle to get it moving with breath. She screamed his name over and over until her voice cracked and her tears slipped into her open mouth. Hands touched her and voices fretted at her gently, trying to persuade her to rest, but she paid them no attention other than to yank herself away from them.

Soul's own coughing barely disrupted her ministrations.

"Maka?" he rasped, his breathing irregular. Only when his voice reached her ears did Maka's hands halt. She lifted her head to meet his gaze, which was hazy but very much alive. A weak smile formed on her lips.

"You're okay," she breathed.

Soul watched her for a few seconds, while the rest of the boat had gone silent. Worry quickly creased his brow, though, when Maka found her eyes drifting closed.

"Maka? Maka, what's wrong?"

She could hear his voice, but the blonde found that she couldn't form a response. Instead, fatigue controlled her body, dragging it downward and draining her of all strength. Soul's anxious calls to her barely reached her ears as she vaguely caught sight of blood behind her, collapsing on his chest and falling into unconsciousness.

* * *

Foam-lined waves gently and steadily washed onto the beach, barely touching his toes as he tentatively stepped into the surf. The water ebbed and flowed, and it almost surprised him when it touched his ankles. It had been so long since he had felt water on his feet that the sensation was unfamiliar to him.

A glance behind himself revealed her smiling face, sheltered from the sun by a red-and-white umbrella. Even in the shade, her green eyes possessed an unwavering glow that her cheerful expression complimented. She waved a little at him from further up the beach, and he moved his hand slightly in reply. Although, when his gaze began to travel down her form, past her yellow tank top and denim shorts, he frowned and turned his attention back to the ocean. The motion caused his white bangs to flop over his eyes, but the red-eyed man pushed them away and let the wind keep them out of his face as he resumed his walk forward.

The water reached up to his thighs, brushing against the bottoms of his swim trucks, and the cold of the winter in early autumn caused his legs to shiver slightly. He felt the sand shift beneath him, washing back and forth with the tide and burying his toes. He jumped slightly when he felt a crab move beneath his feet, followed by snickers sounding from the beach.

"Step on a fish, Soul?" Maka's voice rang out. He shot her a small glare.

"For your information, it was a hermit crab," he snapped back.

The blonde giggled. "Absolutely terrifying. A worthy foe to challenge the terrible White Shark of Port Morte." Soul grumbled under his breath, stepping out of the water to walk towards her. Sand stuck to the bottom of his feet as he treaded across the beach.

"I'm not the White Shark," he muttered, sitting next to his girlfriend on her beach towel. She smiled and ran a hand through his windblown hair.

"I know," she said. He gazed at her from the corner of his eye, returning the expression after a second.

"Thank you," he breathed.

Maka raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

He leaned over to her and brushed his lips against her cheek. "For saving my life," he murmured, his warm breath on her skin. The blonde stiffened slightly, her cheeks going red as her eyes kept flicking back and forth between him and the ground.

"You've said that plenty of times," she said awkwardly. "That was two months ago, Soul."

He shrugged. "Well I'm still grateful," he replied. "I mean, I would've died if you hadn't gotten there. That's what I gathered, anyway."

Maka gave a sheepish nod. "I think that Medusa fully intended to drown you by releasing your curse," she said, to which Soul smirked.

"She didn't count on my cool girlfriend diving in with only half a…" He stopped himself, the smirk falling from his face. Maka didn't notice as she faced away from him, her gaze directed towards their friends as they played in the water of Soul's formerly hidden cove. Black Star had been jumping off the dock multiple times in more ways than they could count, while Patty and Blair simply swam in the surf. Crona stood with Kid in the shallows while the waves washed around their waists and up to their torsos, prompting giggles on Crona's part, and Tsubaki sat on the dock with her feet in the water as Liz tanned in a beach chair on the shore.

"I wasn't your girlfriend then," Maka's voice broke Soul out of his thoughts. He tried to hide his apprehension and put on a clever smirk, but after learning about the blonde's soul perception, he knew that she wouldn't buy it.

"But you are now," he said. Sure enough, Maka frowned a little when she met his eyes, though she said nothing about it.

"Did I tell you that Crona was transferring colleges?" She asked, changing the subject. Soul shook his head, so Maka went on. "I knew that she didn't really want to study at Morte University, but she came with me because she didn't want to do it on her own. But she said that after the ordeal, she wanted to transfer to a college where she could work towards her poetry major," she explained.

Soul's eyes moved to watch the teen in question, who had her arms up in defense to Black Star's splashes. "Why the sudden change?" asked the former shark, his hands busying themselves in shifting the sand at his feet.

Maka fidgeted slightly. "She said that… If I could be brave enough to endure what I went through, then she could be brave too," she murmured.

Soul froze briefly, but his hands soon clenched the sand until it stung his palms. "You had to be brave after what I did to you," he hissed.

The blonde set her hand on his shoulder. "Soul," she said. He could almost hear the frown in her voice as she continued, "I've told you over and over that it wasn't your fault."

Soul didn't move to face her. "Yes, it was," he snapped.

He heard her sigh. "No, it wasn't," she said. "It was Medusa. It was her fault for cursing you and provoking you."

The white-haired man glared down at the sand as if it was the dead witch's face. "Did Medusa bite your leg off?" he hissed. He felt Maka's hand stiffen at his words. "I would've taken the rest of it if you hadn't tried to bring me back to my senses. I would've killed you."

Soul cast an abhorring look towards her right leg. The prosthetic that jutted from it, a machine-like mix of metal and plastic, contrasted with the rest of her flawless body like a colorful reef marred with human trash. And he had done it to her. He had ruined her, permanently disabled her, and traumatized her. His own shame nearly asphyxiated him whenever he looked to long upon the plastic foot that had no similarity to her other perfect one, the leg that operated with pumps and vacuums instead of muscle and bone, the garish yet plain white plastic that had replaced her soft skin.

Her hand cupped his chin suddenly and pulled Soul's sight upward, away from her leg and to her face. "Soul. Listen to me," she said, sternly but gently, as she held eye contact with him. "It was Medusa's doing. She was behind everything, and she was the reason you couldn't control yourself." Her thumb brushed against his cheek, slowly calming him as she continued. "I don't blame you, so you shouldn't blame yourself. Besides, I'm learning how to use this thing," she smiled a little and moved her fake leg slightly for emphasis. "The physical therapy's going great, I can still walk and everything, and soon I'll be able to bike with it. I'll make it," she promised.

Soul didn't move his attention away from her green irises, even as her free hand reached down and grabbed one of his palms. Slowly and inconspicuously, she guided his hand, and the former shark didn't realize what her intentions were until he felt his fingers settle on cold plastic. He immediately and instinctively initiated pulling away in shock, but Maka held him firmly.

"It's okay," she whispered, her voice barely detectable above the wind that whipped her pigtails across her face like ribbons. Her small fingers moved Soul's hand up her prosthetic, leading him to where the socket met her thigh. "See? I'm still me," she smiled as she lifted her hand away from her leg and up to her lips. She kissed it softly, murmuring onto his knuckles, "It hurts to see you blaming yourself like this. Please stop."

Soul watched her, wide-eyed. "I was hurting you?" he asked in disbelief. The blonde nodded.

"I know we both have some things we need to sort out and get over," she continued. Her fingers began to clutch his hand, holding it tightly. "I need to complete my physical therapy and try to get my degree, even after all of this. I'm afraid of sharks now, and I don't know when the next time I swim will be."

Soul felt his guilt increase with every word, but Maka didn't stop there.

"And then there's you," she said, meeting his crimson eyes. "You've got to learn how to be a full-time human again. Liz is working to get you a job at Fish N' Ships, but that'll be an entirely new experience for you and it'll be hard. Plus we both need to come to terms with my new leg," she told him. "Both of us have our problems. But both of us have each other, too." Soul's girlfriend smiled as she spoke. "I promise that I'll be with you every step of the way."

Soul felt the tension ease from his stiff shoulders as he leaned in closer to her. "I promise, too," he swore, watching shades of green dance in her eyes. They shone with mirth when she grinned.

"We'll help each other then," she beamed at him. "We'll get through this. Together." She moved towards him as well, as the white-haired man found himself returning her contagious smile.

"I like the sound of that," he said, his final word muffled by her lips. Thin but smooth and pink, her lips concealed pristine white teeth and a soft tongue that made his breath shorter and his heartbeat faster.

Once they broke apart, Soul rested his head on her shoulder and buried his face in her neck while he slowed his breathing. Maka's hand stroked across his hair, gently pulling apart small tangles and rubbing his ivory strands between her fingers. Her boyfriend heaved a content sigh as he took in the scent of her skin. His lips began forming words before he thought them through.

"I lov-"

"SHARK!" Kid's wild scream reached them from the water. Soul jerked his head up to stare at him, while the others quickly made their way out of the ocean. Liz pulled her sunglasses away from her eyes to stare at the dark-haired man confusedly.

"What shark?" she asked as he skirted past her.

"That one!" he cried, pointing out at the water, where a small gray fin poked from the surface. The form of a shark that couldn't have been more than four feet long barely showed itself beneath the waves.

Tsubaki smiled reassuringly. "It's just a little reef shark," she explained. "It should leave soon; nothing to be scared of."

Crona hid behind Kid, well away from the water. "It's still a shark!" she protested. "It still has teeth!"

Black Star seemed confused. "Wait… All the other sharks are scared of the White Shark!" he said. "None of them would dare come anywhere near this coast!"

Blair chuckled awkwardly. "Well, then I guess the White Shark isn't real," she said, biting her lip. "Right, Maka?"

The group looked on confusedly as Maka replied with a smile, "I guess you're right, Blair." Soul chuckled and wove their fingers together, and the blonde's smile only grew.

"Yeah. The White Shark's just a myth," he added.

The reef shark swam around for a little while, but upon finding no fish to hunt, it unhurriedly turned towards the open ocean. In a matter of seconds, it dove deeper into the water and could no longer be seen.


End file.
